Transcript Evaluating Internet Resources

CIS 150
Based on document by Jan Sauer (USA Librarian)
www.southalabama.edu/univlib/sauer/evaluat.html
World Wide Web
 Variety of Information Available
 Easy to Post Material
 Anyone can create and post to web sites
 Program to write HTML code (Word)
 ISP Provides limited space for users
 Not Necessarily Correct
 Not Necessarily of Good Enough Quality for Research
Paper
 Scholarly Journals
 Blind Review
Evaluating Internet Resources
 Critical Thinking
 Finding Information
 Weighing it’s Quality
 Using it to Think for Yourself
 Need a Healthy Skepticism
 What your Read – Books, Magazines, Newspapers,
Textbooks, Journals
 What you Watch – TV
 Especially Internet Postings
Search Engines
 Purpose is to Make Money
 Google is an Advertising Firm
 Business model is to convert search traffic into ad
revenues
 Search engine must work to attract the audience, but
not the purpose
Criteria for Evaluating Websites
 Authority of the Source
 Bias or Accuracy and Objectivity
 Currency, Coverage, and Continuity
Authority of the Source
1) What Domain is the webpage coming from?
 .edu – Educational (is it an “official” web site or does it
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belong to faculty, staff, or student?)
.gov – Government - Political influence?
.org – Non-profit organization – Bias, Objectivity?
.com – Commercial Vendor – Advertising?
.net – Available to anyone
Authority of the Source
2) How did you get to this site?
 Trusted Person / Website



Doctor
Teacher
Textbook
 Search Engine
 Unsolicited E-mail
 The more you trust the source, the less you have to
worry about the quality
Authority of the Source
3) Do you recognize the:
 Author
 Institution
 Entity where the Server Resides
 Is there a re-direct link?
http://www.nytimes.com:[email protected]/
country_music_study.html
Authority of the Source
4) Can you find out more about the Author on the Site?
 “About Us”, “Who We Are”
 If not, Why Not?
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Is there some implied bias?
Does someone take responsibility for the content of
the page?
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Are those responsible named and their credentials
given?
If not, do not use it
http://activistcash.com/
Authority of the Source
 Domain Registration Records
 http://allwhois.com/
http://CentralOps.net/co/
http://www.internic.net/whois.html
http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois
BetterWhois.com
edu domains: http://whois.educause.net/edudomain/whois.asp
 Exercise: Who is really responsible for this website?
IslamicConcern.com
Bias or Accuracy and Objectivity
1) What is the Purpose of this information
 Public Service
 Make Money
 News
 Education
 Advertising
 Sales
 Humor
 Etc.
Bias or Accuracy and Objectivity
2) Is any sort of bias evident
 Unbalanced language
 Claiming absolute truths without verifiable data
 Acknowledgement of others opinions, controversies or
theories
http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/sauer/propaganda.html
Bias or Accuracy and Objectivity
3) Can you verify the information in another reputable
source?

Journalists should have 2 sources, do you?
http://www.sniggle.net/bathtub.php
Bias or Accuracy and Objectivity
4) Is the information blatant advertising?
 Is it subtle advertising?
http://www.mercola.com
Bias or Accuracy and Objectivity
5) Does the author display knowledge of related
sources?

Believable bibliography / footnotes
6) Is quality evident through other factors:
 Design
 Presentation
 Spelling/Grammar
 Working Links
 Good web pages are not always accurate, however,
badly done web pages are especially suspect!
Bias or Accuracy and Objectivity
 Evaluate this website for bias:
http://www.martinlutherking.org/
Currency and Coverage and
Continuity
1) Is the document manually or automatically updated?
2) Does the webpage state when it was last revised?
This may matter based on subject (history , medical, legal)
3) Is there indication of whether this is part of a large
body of work
4) Is this page likely to disappear tomorrow?

Print/download pages to prove sites
When was this site last updated:
Plagiarism for Students
Documentation and Plagiarism
 Document online sources according to the style
required by your instructor/discipline
 Taking information off a website, even paraphrasing a
webpage, without citing the source is plagiarism.
 Email, chat and texting info. must also be cited in your
paper.
 Will your instructor let you run your paper through
Turnitin before final submission?
 Using a free term paper or using one bought on the
web is plagiarism.
Efficiency – Make Your Results Better
 Know what type of information you need
 If you need “scholarly” information/journals don’t use search engines,
go to library databases
 Scholarly research for an upper division paper?
Some scholarly associations or
library databases or open access journals (DOAJ) or Google Scholar.
 Primary documents for a history paper?
Maybe from the Library of Congress
American Memory Project or a
history interest group or a
university online project.
 Books published before 1920. Sometimes these have been scanned and
put online.
Google Books or our list of Electronic Books.
Efficiency – Make Your Results Better
 Know what type of information you need (continued)
 Popular and current stories for a public speaking class?
Popular magazines and newspapers online or in a
library databases online
 Variety of viewpoints?
Opposing Viewpoints database, CQ Researcher
(scroll for these in the alphabetical list of databases on this page.
 The latest medical knowledge about drug interactions for your parents
health issues, but written to be understood by a layperson?
government sites or a library database
 The MOST current news for your own curiosity?
 LexisNexis database
 Google news or
 Yahoo news gathered from a variety of reliable sources.
Efficiency – Make Your Results Better
 Use the Advanced Searches in your Search Engine
 Google: Returns only results with all of your search words -- automatically
ANDs terms together; does not support the OR operator. Google HELP.
 Google Advanced Search: includes PDF page searches. Allows "all of these
words" which is the equivalent of a Boolean "and" search. Also allows limits to
specific domains, searching in the title only and phrase searching without
using parentheses. Highly Recommended!
 AltaVista : Use quotation marks around phrases. The Boolean operators AND,
OR, NOT and NEAR can be used in an Advanced Search. Can also limit by
domain (.edu, .gov, for example.)AltaVista HELP
 AlltheWeb: Uses + for "and" and - for "not." AlltheWeb Help
 Ask.com: enter phrases, questions or single words. Ask.com Help
 USA.gov: government information. Supports wildcards * and ?. USA.gov Help
 Yahoo : Allows the use of the + and - but not Boolean searching. Yahoo HELP
Efficiency – Make Your Results Better
 Specialized Search Engines –
 Searches can be limited to specific file types, such as images, subject areas, such
as science, or to certain places on the Internet, such as FAQs or Internet
Discussion Groups.
 Ditto: Search for images.
 USA.gov: Allows searching for information from government sites only.
 Google Books
 Google Groups: Search or Browse usenet groups. Help.
 Google Maps
 L-Soft: for finding electronic lists.
 Scirus: Searches preapproved scientific Web sites and databases.
Works Sited
 http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/sauer/evaluat.
html
 http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/search.html