Teaching inclusive and critical searching

1. Introduction

As a university lecturer, you guide your students not only in what to learn, but also how to learn. In today's world of information overload, that means helping them engage with search engines and databases in a critical way. While these tools provide quick access to academic literature, they are far from neutral: what you and your students will find (or more importantly, will not find) is influenced by algorithms, disciplinary traditions and the commercial interests of the companies behind those search engines and databases.

This online guide will help you:

recognize biases of the most common search engines and databases;
understand why awareness of these biases matters for academic teaching and research;
equip your students with strategies for more inclusive and critical searching.

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Author: Universiteitsbibliotheek VU
Last modified: 2025-11-03 13:53:50
License: This learning material is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This means that, as long as you give attribution, you are free to:

Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

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for any purpose, including commercial purposes.

More information about the CC Naamsvermelding 4.0 Internationale licentie.

This short elearning is created by Michèle Meijer (VU), Linde Voorend (VU) and Stefano Giani (UvA), on behalf of the VU University Library.

The elearning is largely based on the workshop Diversity and Inclusion in Searching: Awareness, Sources and Strategies, given by Stefano Giani and Michèle Meijer on 20 January 2025 at the Library Academy, organized by the libraries of VU, UvA and HvA.

Additional information about this learning material

The following additional information is available about this learning material:

Description: Inclusief literatuur zoeken voor VU-docenten
Education level: WO - Bachelor; WO - Master;
End user: leraar
Difficulty: gemiddeld
Keywords: bias, biases in searching, critical searching, decolonization, diversity, inclusion, inclusive, inclusive literature, inclusive searching, inclusive teaching

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