For scholarly, academic, or class-related research projects, a combination of library and Web resources usually produces the best results.
The Web is easy and fast. Many times, there are things easily available on the Web that are not easily available elsewhere. Moreover, the Web is a revolutionary communications tool.
However, you need to use the Web carefully. It's important to understand what's there and what isn't there. It's also important to ask yourself some questions about what you find on the Web, such as "Who wrote this page?", and "What is this person's academic credentials?". Finally, you still need to use reputable and refereed academic resources, most of which are traditional library resources (e.g., books, journal articles), even though your library may now enable you to access these things via the Web.
There is a difference between material written for a general audience and material written for professional colleagues. For help in understanding the differences between professional and popular literature, see Distinguishing Scholarly Journals From Other Periodicals in the START tutorial.
Academic libraries and other types of libraries are working with search engines such as Google and Yahoo to make valuable research materials available in search engine searches. In particular, libraries are trying to make available digital archives and digital libraries that they produce. An international library organization -- the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) -- produces a number of unique and powerful databases, including the world's largest bibliographic database, which is a collection of more than 57,000 library catalogs from around the world. OCLC is working with both Google and Yahoo to make a limited number of records from this database available in search engine searches. Librarians currently are making strong efforts to work with search engine companies to make materials available in search engine searches, but some materials will most likely never be available in a digital format. Most books published before 1995 fall into this category, as well as many older journal articles, newspaper articles, historical maps, archives, letters, diaries, older census statistics, and genealogical materials. Therefore, depending on the nature of your research, you are likely going to have to use a mixture of resources -- print and electronic.