EVALUATING WEB SITES AND SOURCES

1. EVALUATING WEB SITES AND SOURCES

2. Today’s objective is to learn how to be critical with each resource you use in your literature review. • The web is full of academic information; you only need to learn how to find it. • It is important to know how to evaluate the information you want to cite. • We will start with the evaluation of web pages/ sites and continue with evaluation of sources.

3. Evaluation web pages/ sites: • Start with looking at the URL domain, (between http:// and the first /) http://usuniversity.edu/ • Is it a personal page? Does it have a personal name following by a tilde, a percent sign, or words like “people”, “users” or “members”? Is the server a commercial ISP like aol.com or geocities.com? • Is the domain a government site? “.gov”, “.mil”? or

4. Important issues while looking at the domain: • Is the domain educational? “.edu” or nonprofit organization “.org” • Is the domain commercial? “.com” • Is the country code from the country you are looking for “.us”, “.ca”, “.uk”?

5. Examples of who is the “publisher” or agency or person operating the “server”, (between http:// and the first /): • http://circuit.sdsu.edu/ • http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/standards/standards.pdf • http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED430564.pdf • https://www.ffa.org/programs/grantsandscholarships/Scholarships/ These internet sites can help you: www.abbreviations.com/ http://www.acronymfinder.com/

6. You also need to learn how to identify the University acronyms • usuniversity.edu (United States University) • ucsd.edu (University of California in San Diego) • You will find that for documents published within United States, the Country is not mentioned: • digitalcommons.calpoly.edu • minds.wisconsin.edu • docs.lib.purdue.edu • deepblue.lib.umich.edu

7. “.edu” stands for Universities in United States, for the rest of the world, you need to learn the acronyms For example, “ca” for Canada, “mx” for Mexico, “es” for Spain, “au” for Australia or “uk” for United Kingdom. • usir.salford.ac.uk • discovery.ucl.ac.uk • eprints.qut.edu.au • fcm.ens.uabc.mx These sites can help you: www.abbreviations.com/ http://www.acronymfinder.com/

8. Narrow your results by domain: • If searching Google – Advanced Search, http://www.google.ca/advanced_search • you can also narrow your results by Site or domain. • For example search Google advance search “web site evaluation” and limit the domain to site: .edu • Or limit your results to a domain like .org or .gov

9. Look for the background of the site, truncate back the URL • i.e. delete the end characters of the URL stopping just before each /. Press enter and checked. You will find interesting information or none. • www.gatesfoundation.org/topics/pages/scholarships.aspx • www.gatesfoundation.org/topics/ • www.gatesfoundation.org/

10. Find out who is the author or the responsible body. Google is a good source. • Search Google Blog Search and learn what they say about the web site. • Caution: do not use the information if there is no confirmation about the author nor page update. • You need to question everything you find in the web critically. Where did the author retrieve the information? Are they reliable sources? • Well-developed pages include links to other pages with opposite point of view • Do the links work?

11. Check in alexa.com what are the web pages link to this particular page Copy and paste or type the URL you are evaluating, click search and click on the “get details” button: • Find out the traffic of the web page • Ownership information • Related link to other sites who visited the page • Sites linking to the web page • See also Wayback machine for old pages http://archive.org/web/web.php

12. Evaluating Information sources. Remember the five W’s: Who, What, When, Where and Why • You will need to ask these questions, whether is printed or online, if it is a book, an image or article from a journal, newspaper, a website or any source you want to cite. • Authority • Timeliness • Accuracy • Coverage

13. Authority: • Is there an author? • What is the author’s affiliation? • Does the author have produce more works? • Are these works cited? Can you contact the author? • Is the domain education “.edu” in the URL, or “.com” (commercial) or “.gov”(Government)? • Is there a tilde (~) in the URL? This may indicate a personal web directory

14. Timeliness: • Is there a date when the research started or the document created? • Or revised, edited or updated? • If it is a web site, when was the last time was updated? Note: Scroll down at the end of the page, and look for the date, the page was last modified.

15. Accuracy: • Is the source in a peer-reviewed publication or journal? If not can you verified the factual information or who is responsible for the information? • If it contains graphs, charts or images, are the sources clear?

16. Coverage: • Is the content relevant to your research? • Includes conclusions? and are they based on evidence? • Is the information scholarly? • For online sources from a web site, is the document complete?

17. For more information see: • http://library.sdsu.edu/reference/research/evaluating-information San Diego State University • http://help.library.ubc.ca/evaluating-and-citing-sources/evaluating-information-sources/ University of British Columbia. • https://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/webeval.html Cornell University Library • http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html Berkeley Libraries

18. Thank you for taking the time to learn! It is my pleasure to help you Please contact me at: M.L.S Catalina Lopez clopez@usuniversity.edu (619) 477 6310 ext. 2017