I’ve just finished working on a little book, called What every Student Should Know about Researching Online, which I co-authored with Shireen Campbell (which explains the light posting the last few days). It’s going to be roughly 128 pages, and it’s designed to supplement college textbooks in a variety of disciplines.

It’s based on our earlier book Researching Online, but the book had to be nearly completely rewritten from scratch, since the last time we touched that book was in 2002 — light years ago, in internet terms. There was no mention of blogs, MySpace and Facebook didn’t exist yet (we mention them now merely to suggest they aren’t very good research sources), and Google was still just a little search engine company.

Here’s the table of contents:

1. Creating an online persona
2. A field guide to participating in online discussion
3. Evaluating sources
4. Finding the right information
5. Managing the information you find
6. Giving credit to your sources: Copyright online
7. Giving credit to your sources: Documenting online sources
Appendix: How to make anything look good online

I’m pleased with the results, though I really wish we could have had a little more time to polish it. It will be a handy guide for students whose previous experience with the internet was IM and iTunes. You can look for it in your local college bookstore next fall.