A global focus on material is facilitated by the internet and this will be important as the vast majority of references to debating are dominated by sites outside Europe.
Use of the Internet should also result in this being a low cost route to finding information. The difficulty will be in selecting the most relevant and robust locations. It is a line of research that cannot be ignored. However, it is still the researcher's task to critique the information prior to use and assess its relevancy to the research being conducted.
Conducting research is not a perfect science, and always involves trade-offs involving a number of factors, e.g. availability, relevance, accuracy and cost. The availability of electronic sources makes it easier and quicker to discover a great variety of data. But there are additional risks as much nonsense is included with the gems. It is now easy for anyone to publish his or her thoughts and ideas without the base of academic rigor. Academic portals provided by libraries help us avoid much of this information. Researchers must therefore resist the temptation of "easier to get, easier to use", and maintain due diligence in inspection of data collected.
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