I don’t know about you, but I’m a curious person. When I hear or see something that interests me, I start asking questions. My questions usually fall into four categories: how something works, how much something will cost me, how current events (work, news or friends/family) will impact me and what tools or resources I might need to complete a project.

From the time you get up in the morning, until you go to bed at night, you need to find out information to make decisions in your life. Maybe you need to know how to use SPSS or Photoshop. Maybe you need to find out how much the new iPhone and cell phone plans for it cost. Maybe  you need to find out how the new state budget has effected you financial aid package. Or maybe your Professor has just assigned a research project and you don’t know where to start looking for information.

If so, you’re not alone, but how do you start your search? For many of us, the first thing we do is talk to our friends and family members to get their advice. Have they ever had the same question? How did they answer it? Did they get the information they needed? If we aren’t successful asking them, we move to searching an online search engine such as Google. If we don’t find what we are looking for there or all the information we want in one article or report, we assume what we are looking for can’t be found and give up.

You may not realize it, but, you often cannot find the information you need to answer your every question from just one place! And you might even need to change the strategies you use to search for that information depending on what resources you are using. Did you know that Google can only find 23.5 billion of the more than 80 billion websites that are published?  And that most of these websites only contain free journal articles and other information that is free?

Well, then how do you search the other 64.5 billion websites?  You can actually access much of this paid content for free through your college library databases  24/7. From the UNH Library Homepage (http://www.newhaven.edu/library), select Databases from the menu on the left hand site. Then, log in  with your UNH username and password. This provides access to many journals, journal articles, electronic books or government publications. Did you also know that you may need to use a combination of electronic and print resources to find the information you need? Or that there are people in the library-librarians- who can help you figure out how to search? They have created guides that are available 24/7 that can be found at http://libguides.newhaven.edu.  Help to find the answers you need is also available via:

• Phone   (203) 932-7189

• email     [email protected]

• in person – Just stop by or make an appointment ahead of time

So, the next time you feel like giving up on finding the answers to your question after asking your family or friends  or searching Google, remember to contact the library and you might be surprised just what other information you can find.