1. AUTHORITY and the word is…

2. It’s all about the authority of the source: • Who are they? • What do they know about the topic? • Are they scholars or pundits? • Are they pretenders or psychos?

3. What’s the best source? It’s your call. • Newspapers? • Popular magazines? • Scholarly publications? • Books • Magazines • Journals • World Wide Web?

4. Your source is dictated by your goal: • Do you know anything about your subject? • Are you looking for depth? • Do you only want brevity? • Are you looking for eyewitnesses? • Do you need the entire history? • Is 24/7 access important? • What are the requirements of the assignment?

5. How do you know? • You have to ask the questions. • You can make assumptions. • If it’s appeared in print, authority has been vetted for you. • If it’s on the www, you have to look a little closer. • One way to find out who is responsible for any webpage is to use the link: • http://easywhois.com

6. And then there’s social bookmarking: • Using delicious.com allows you to access you www bookmarks from any computer at any time. • All you need is a free account • http://del.icio.us/

7. Googilitis: • Why is the first result first? • The PageRankalgorithim: PageRankevaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites. • Are there other search engines? • Altavista.com • Ask.com

8. What are the other search engines?http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156221 • http://www.yahoo.com • http://www.ask.com • http://www.alltheweb.com • http://www.hotbot.com • http://www.altavista.com • http://www.gigablast.com • http://www.live.com • http://www.lycos.com