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A Note About Evaluating
Internet Sources
| The search engines, subject guides and other Web sites
listed below are designed to help you find information on the Web.
Once you find appropriate Web sites you will need to evaluate them.
Too often, we assume that information on the Internet is somehow better
information and that all information on the Internet is of equal value.
Neither statement is true.
Researchers have always needed to evaluate the information they were using. In the print world of books and periodicals, however, there were some built-in safeguards as to the quality of the information. The editorial process usually, but not always, insured a certain level of quality. Libraries also exercised some quality control by their selection of which materials to include in their collections. That comfort level is missing on the Web. It is missing because anyone can publish on the Web. There is no quality control. It is up to you, the user, to evaluate what you find on the Web. While many of the visual clues that are used to evaluate print resources disappear on Web sites, it is still useful to begin your evaluation with several traditional evaluation criteria. These criteria are authority (who is the author and what authority does he or she bring to the subject?), content (is it accurate, current, and objective?), and the purpose (who is the intended audience and is the content appropriate for that audience?) These are good starting points, but are not everything you should be asking yourself as you look at a Web site. Because of the vast amounts of information that can be retrieved
quickly on the Web, it can be useful to let others guide you to good sites.
That is what the Hiram College Library has tried to do with its Internet
pages that are linked from its subject pages. Additionally,
the sites listed under Subject
Guides and marked with a This is just a brief background into evaluating information. Click here for more details on the above criteria, other questions you should ask, and a list of other sites related to evaluating Web pages. |
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Search engines provide a way to search specific Web pages, either by a keyword search or by browsing subject headings. Remember there is no single entity responsible for the Web. (While it is often called the "Information Highway," the analogy of a frontier being explored and settled is probably a better analogy.) As such, no single search engine, despite the realization that some may index more than 100 million Web pages, covers the entire Web. Remember, too, that since most search engines index the full-text of Web pages, you are likely to retrieve a large number of sites, many of which will prove to be pretty much useless for your research. The search engines listed below are the most commonly used.
They are arranged by the type of search engine -- traditional search engines,
subject guides, and multiple search engines. For more information
of search engines, check out the sites listed here:
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These search engines provide automatic indexing through the use of
spiders, robots, crawlers, etc. and also accept user submissions.
They index the full-text of Web pages, but do not index the entire Web,
although the indexes can be quite large. There is often little
overlap between search engines. Search engines cannot index pages
that are password protected, records from individual databases, or the
content of multimedia programs. The first two of these exceptions
means none of the 100 plus databases subscribed to by the Hiram College
Library are included in any search engine. The most used search
engines are listed below. Everyone seems to have his or her favorite.
If you don't, try several on the same topic until you get comfortable with
one or two.
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Subject guides use staff to review and select Web sites, not pages,
to be added to the index. Thus, they provide a subject heading approach
somewhat akin to subject searching in the library catalog. Smaller
than traditional search engines, these sites are a good way to narrow down
a topic by following appropriate subdivisions. Some of the most common
subject guides are listed below.
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These search engines can be useful because they search several search
engines at the same time, although which search engines depends upon the
specific multiple search engine you choose to use. This can help
overcome the problem of no one search engine covering the entire Web.
You should remember, however, that search statements may not translate
well across search engines meaning you may not get accurate results and
that you may be shown only some of the pages retrieved from each individual
search engine. A short list of multiple search engines appears below.
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| The sites listed below help you locate addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and/or home pages for people throughout the United States and the world. |
These sites will help you find addresses, telephone
numbers, and email addresses for businesses and other organizations.
Often you can search by type of business.
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The sites listed here are designed to help you locate
special types of web sites.
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Note: A print copy of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association, 4th Edition, is on Reserve in the Library.
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Note. A print copy of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers,
4th Edition is on Reserve in the Library.
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are particularly good sources for identifying quality Web sites.
Finally, journals are beginning to review Web sites in much the same way
they have reviewed books. For example, College
and Research Libraries News publishes both