WEB SITE EVALUATION

LIBRARY VS. INTERNET

• See handout

HOW TO EVALUATE WEB SITES

• Author (individual or group)

• Publisher

• Date (is it important to your topic?)

• Cited sources

• Common Sense (bias, logical, facts vs. opinions, errors and dead links)

URLS

• .com – usually a commercial site

• .net, .org – sometimes a non-profit, but anyone can get a domain ending in either of these

• .edu – affiliated with an educational institution like a school or library, but it can be a professor or a student, so beware

• .gov, .mil – government/military site. Usually credible, great source of statistics and other information, though some topics may involve a bias, such as No Child Left Behind or Patriot Act

• None of these are fool-proof

CRAP DETECTION

• "Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him."

- Ernest Hemingway, 1954

NOW YOU TRY:• Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

• Martinlutherking.org

• Martin Luther King Jr.

• CNN.com

• The Onion

• Muggle

• Mold Removal

LET’S TRY ONE MORE TOGETHER…