• Varies and is difficult to verify.
• Cannot limit to professional, scholarly literature.
• Web content is seldom regulated; anyone with Internet access can post content.

• Easy to determine.
• Credentials often provided in standardized format, so you don't need to hunt for them.
• Most contain only scholarly literature or offer a scholarly/peer-reviewed search filter.

• Lack of subject focus can result in numerous irrelevant hits – or "junk" – to wade through.
• Much web information is opinionated and biased.
• Quantity does not equal Quality.

• Focus by subject (business, art, American history) and/or format (journals, books, reviews) often means more relevant information and less time wasted dealing with junk.
• Information comes from legitimate, quality-controlled, published sources.

• Varies by search engine, but often limited.
• Can limit by document type (.doc, .pdf) or language, but limiting by publication date, format (article, book, etc.), scholarly/peer-reviewed is unavailable.

• Numerous advanced search features determined by database subject focus, e.g., limiting by publication type, date, language, document format, scholarly/peer-reviewed status.
• The list of features is as long as the number of databases available.

Access to published
information

• Web information often lives and dies on the Web and can come from anyone with Internet access.
• Seldom is the information coming from legitimate published sources: magazines, academic journals, books, etc. When it is, the user usually has to pay to access it.

• Deal only with published information; that is, information that originally appeared in print: magazine and journal articles, books, etc.
• More stable than the web. Through the library's paid access, all of this information is available to you, the user, for free.