Information Jungle HomeLesson Six HomePfau Library Evaluating Sources W HENEVER you are doing research it is important to evaluate your sources, but when doing research on the Internet, it becomes absolutely crucial.  Since there is no quality control on the Internet you must learn to do the job yourself otherwise you will waste enormous amounts of time and effort trying to work with inadequate resources. When you find something that looks good, be suspicious!  Things may not be what they seem.  Let's say that you are looking for a movie review and you find a Web site that offers a free database of reviews.  If you don't stop to take a closer look, you will never know that this particular database is set up so anyone who wants to can contribute a review which makes this source useless for academic research.  Movie reviews written by ordinary people may be helpful if you're trying to decide which video to rent, but movie reviews written by professional movie critics is what you really need in this situation. When you find a site that looks useful always take time to: Discover who the author is.  It could be either a person or an organization. Read the "About" section of the site if there is one. Find out if it has been recently updated. See if the author documents what they've written by giving a list of the sources they used. Many of the criteria used to evaluate printed sources also apply to Internet sources, but there are some unique ones.  The list of criteria on the next page is adapted from one done by UCLA librarian, Esther Grassian.  Use it as a checklist when you find a Web site you'd like to use as a source.  You may want to get some help from your professor or a reference librarian in answering some of the questions on the list.  For example, a reference librarian would be particularly helpful in answering "How does it compare to information available in other sources, both print and electronic?" Sometimes you will land on a Web page that looks useful but there's no author listed, no date, and no links to any further information.  Here's a sneaky trick you can use to find out more.  It's called "nibbling away the URL." You've probably already noticed that URLs (Web site addresses) frequently have a lot of slashes in them, for example: www.something.com/newproducts/toasters/sunbeam.html Reading right to left, this URL tells you that you are on the page for Sunbeam brand toasters in the toaster section of the new product section of this company.  Here's another example to help you understand–if you have money in your wallet which is in your purse which is in your car which is in your garage you could express that URL-style this way: www.garage.com/car/purse/wallet/money.html All browsers will display the full URL for the page you are viewing, usually in a long box at the top of your screen.  If you delete the last part of the URL up to and including the first slash, then press Enter or Return on your keyboard, you will go to the next level up.  Keep doing this until you either discover who the author is, etc., or determine that this information is not available.   If you did this with the example above, you would begin by deleting /money.html.   If you did not find the information you need, next you would delete /wallet.   Ever watch a grasshopper eat a blade of grass?  It starts at the very tip of the blade of grass and keeps nibbling until it reaches the stem or root.  Use the same approach on URLs. Lesson Six continues on the next page.