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Re: Finding information on the Internet



At 11:50 AM 4/8/2003 -0400, you wrote:
John, your objections to the Berkelely library tutorial's suggestions are
obviously worthy concerns. However, I would like to offer a comment on its
procedure. My reading of the five broad criteria is that they begin with
the first thing a student can see and then work down to the real meat of
the matter. As professionals in an area, we can legitimately ask the
ultimate question, "Does it all add up?" And we know enough of our subject
area to be able to answer this question. From my experience with
non-science majors and even our majors in a joint math-computer
science-physics senior seminar course, many students do not have this
experience or skill. (This is really why I always try to interact with
students on their choices of web sites or library books as sources.)

Thus to me, the suggested questions are a good place _for students_ to
begin (working from the outside in):

1. What can the URL tell you?
- Is it somebody's personal page?
- What type of domain does it come from?
- Is it published by an entity that makes sense?
2. Scan the perimeter of the page, looking for answers to these
questions:
- Who wrote the page?
- Is the page dated? Is it current enough?
- What are the author's credentials on this subject?
3. Look for indicators of quality information.
- Are sources documented with footnotes or links?
- Are sources documented with footnotes or links?
- If reproduced information (from another source), is it complete,
not altered, not fake or forged?
- Are there links to other resources on the topic
4. What do others say?
- Who links to the page?
- Is the page listed in one or more reputable directories or pages?
- What do others say about the author or responsible authoring
body?
5. Does it all add up?
- Why was the page put on the web
- Might it be ironic? Satire or parod
- Is this as good as resources I could find if I used the library,
or some of the web-based indexes available through the library,
or other print resources?
[Source:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html ]

These questions in no way guarantee a "reliable" web site, but in my
experience they do give students a place to begin in attempting to evaluate
web sites from their lack of experience and knowledge.

Richard
-------------------
Richard L. Bowman
Prof. of Physics / Dir. of Academic Computing
Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, VA 22812, USA
http://www.bridgewater.edu/~rbowman/

I hope that all faculty will follow Richard's example and incorporate
dialog on evaluation of information, especially internet sites into class
discussion.

There are a multitude of factors to be considered when one is evaluating a
web site. It is of course possible to tailor a check-list to stress what
is important on the page.

Some faculty do this by having the students look at a hoax site and then
discuss it.

Pat


Patricia T. Viele, Physics & Astronomy Librarian
Edna McConnell Clark Physical Sciences Library
Clark Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-2501
Voice: 607-255-4016
FAX: 607-255-5288
email: ptv1@cornell.edu