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Guidelines for Evaluating Web Resources

• Know the difference between the open web and academic databases
• Criteria for evaluating information on the Open Web
• Web Evaluation Tutorials

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Know the difference between the open-web and an academic database

The free web..

• is a wonderful but unpredictable shapeshifter where information appears, disappears and changes day by day where editorial or ethical standards are variable or non-existent (think of the movie Brazil).

• content quality, authority, scope and currency of information on the free-web is highly variable.

Academic databases...

• are guided by strict publication standards. Like published works in print such as books and journals, they are edited, reviewed and have carefully thought-out standards for developing and retaining content. To see a list of databases in many disciplines, link to Carnegie Mellon: Databases by Subject or Carnegie Mellon:Databases by Name.
  

 

Criteria for evaluating information on the open web:

• What is the Source of the information?
  • How authoritative is the site?
  • Who created the site? (Individual, group?)
  • What background or qualifications/credentials does sh/e/they have
  • Does the author have an institutional affiliation?
  • Does the site easily let you know who the author is?
  • Is contact information available?
  • If the information source is not primary (original) material, is information properly cited and credited?
    
    
• How Accurate is the information?
  • To judge this, It's best to use diversity of reliable sources including books or periodicals to verify open-web information.
  • The more you search on a topic via the web and verify information with other resources, certain facts can become apparent, giving you an little extra margin for verifying accuracy of the content.
    
    
• How Objective is the information?
  • What is the author's agenda or bias?
  • Are other resources cited to back up the information?
    
    
• How Current is the information?
  • When was the site produced?
  • Is it updated regularly?
    
    
• How Comprehensive is the information?
  • What's the scope of the information given?
  • Cursory or in-depth?

 

Web evaluation tutorials

• Computing Skills Workshop: Evaluating the Web and Web Searching Tips (Jean Alexander, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries)
  
  
• Internet Detective: Wise Up to the Web
  A very detailed and comprehensive tutorial.