The Reference Department of the Lorette Wilmot Library at Nazareth College
Evaluating
Internet Sources
Introduction
You can
find just about anything on the web: silly sites and hoaxes, celebrity fan club
pages, personal web sites with family photos, games, advertisements, reviews,
course syllabi and whole courses, conference papers from academic and
professional conferences, historical documents, and articles, just to name a
few. How do you separate the wheat from
the chaff?
Here are
some questions to consider:
Where is
the web site coming from?
Who is the
author or publisher of the information on the web site?
Who is the
intended audience?
How current
is the information? When was the web
site last updated?
Where is
the web site coming from?
Knowing
the origin of the web site is important in determining whether or not the
web site contains useable and reliable information.
The address of a web page, called an URL (for Uniform Resource Locator)
is one potentially helpful indicator. For
example, let’s look at the web address, or URL, of Nazareth College’s
web site:
The “.edu”
part of the web address is called the “top-level domain”. It can help you to identify the general
purpose of the organization – in this case, the purpose is educational. Most web sites with “.edu” domains belong to
colleges or universities.
Here are
the most common top-level domains:
.com =
usually a commercial business site or internet service provider
.edu =
educational; usually a college or university web site
.gov =
United States government (non-military)
.mil =
United States military site
.net =
typically networks, internet service providers. Internet service providers may also have a “.com” domain. Web sites with .net (or sometimes .com)
domains are often actually authored by private individuals or organizations,
but the internet service provider or network sells them the “space” to post
their web sites.
.org = usually
a non-profit organization, usually (but not always) based in the United States
Web sites
originating in countries other than the United States include two-letter country
codes as part of their domain names – for example “.ca” for Canada and “.mx”
for Mexico.
Some search
engines, such as Google (http://www.google.com)
allow you to include the top-level domain in your search, so that your search
results will be limited to, for example, web pages from educational (.edu)
sites. You can see this feature on
Google’s Advanced Search menu (linked to Google’s main page).
Who is
the author or publisher of the information on the web site?
Reliable
web sites will usually have a section that describes the organization or
individual who has overall responsibility for the content. Here are a couple of examples:
Web
site of the non-profit organization, Human Rights Watch:
Note: On
the left side of the web page, click on the button labeled “About HRW”.)
Web
site of Cheryl J. Cox, educator/educational consultant
(Note: On
the left side of the web page, click on the button labeled “Curriculum
Vitae”. A curriculum vitae is similar
to a resume.)
http://www.zianet.com/cjcox/edutech4learning/
If it is
not clear who is responsible for the content of the web site, try backspacing
back to the top-level domain – e.g., .edu, .org, etc. For example, if we’re on the page with the following address:
http://www.library.arizona.edu/images/burnedbooks/indexpage.htm
and backspace to
http://www.library.arizona.edu
and hit
the Enter key, we will see that the web exhibit “When Books Burn” is part
of the University of Arizona Library’s web site.
Read
carefully, though – the actual authors of the site may just be “renting space”
from an internet service provider who is not the author of the site. Here’s a example – from Canada –
backspaced
to http://www.icomm.ca
leads you to the home page of iComm, an Internet service provider that donates
its services (including web page accounts) to nonprofit causes.
Fortunately,
the author of http://www.icomm.ca/emily
has an “About this site” section on the site, so you can find out more about
the author and the site.
If an
organization claims responsibility for the content of a web site, what kind of
an organization is it (governmental, educational, business, or non-profit) and
what is its reputation? If you are
uncertain about an organization’s reputation, your professor may be able to
help you, or a librarian can help you check the organization’s reputation in
other sources.
If an
individual claims expertise in a given subject, what are his or her
credentials? For example, college
professors who have written articles or books will sometimes list their
publications on their web sites. Not
only does this document their expertise, but such lists may also help in
leading you to other useful resources.
Reliable
web sites also offer a way to contact the organization or individual
responsible for the content. Street
addresses and telephone numbers are a good sign, but a web site may only have
an e-mail address for contact purposes.
Who is
the intended audience?
Asking this
question may prevent you from making costly mistakes in the selection of web
resources.
The
audience for a web site is tied to its purpose. A web site that was created for a college course, for example,
may post student papers or student web projects. The purpose of such a web site would most likely be to share work
and encourage discussion among the participants in the class – not necessarily
to serve as a reliable source of factual information to web surfers who just
happen across the web site.
Your
assignment may also have requirements that make the intended audience
critically important. For example, a
requirement that you use medical information written by and for health care
professionals would eliminate web sites aimed only at patients.
Web sites
from professional or educational organizations are often explicit about the
targeted audience. For example, the
web site of the National Council for the Social Studies plainly states on
its home page (http://www.ncss.org/)
that it is an information service for educators.
Some web
sites have more than one potential audience, and organize their content
accordingly. Look for buttons or
toolbars on the home page of the web site, or for a link to a “site map”. These will help you identify content
designed for specific audiences.
Here are
a couple of examples:
Web
site of the New York State Department of Health
(See the
buttons provided to the left of the home page – Info for Consumers, Info for
Providers, and Info for Researchers.)
http://www.health.state.ny.us/home.html
The
site map for the American Psychological Association’s web site
http://www.apa.org/sitemap.html
identifies
areas for psychologists, students, and children (“KidsPsych”), as well as areas
for APA members only.
How
current is the information? When was
the web site last updated?
One of the
Internet’s greatest strengths is its ability to provide literally
up-to-the-minute information. That
said, there is much on the Internet that is out of date, and many web sites are
not kept current.
Quality web
sites provide a date of last update for the site, usually on the home
page. Ideally, individual web pages and
documents on a site will also include information as to when they were added to
the site, or were last updated. Web
sites that show no dates, or that have numerous broken links (links to other
sites that have moved or are no longer active) should be regarded with caution.
Here is an
example of a web site indicating when individual pages were last updated. Scroll to the bottom of individual pages to
see the dates.
When
Books Burn (University of Arizona Library Exhibit)
http://www.library.arizona.edu/images/burnedbooks/indexpage.htm
This site
also identifies sources and original dates for all of the documents and
photographs reproduced on the site, and provides a bibliography of those
sources – another sign of quality.
JSB Summer
2003 (based on a handout originally created for the HEOP/Excel Summer Institute)