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Evaluating Sources on the Web

How to use the Internet to find your information

Types of information available online:

  • Information for personal use
  • Information from corporate sources (stock quotes, etc.)
  • Local, state, and federal government information
  • Current information from news sources
  • Information about hobbies, recreation, and personal interests
  • Information written for a general or popular audience
  • Social media and blog posts
  • Ads and shopping

Types of information available in a library database:

  • Information written for and by academics for academic purposes
  • Information organized and categorized enabling ease of use
  • Information that has been chosen by the CSCC faculty and library staff to meet the specific needs of CSCC students

Ready to choose between finding information online or at the library?  Here are some things to keep in mind that will help you find the best information for your current needs:

  • All research, whether you are doing research with a search engine or library database, is going to take time to do correctly.
  • A library database has collected articles specifically for academic audiences. 
  • A library database will only search for the items contained within that database, whereas a search engine will search across the web.
  • Many of the articles that could be useful in an academic setting are behind a paywall when searching a web engine such as Google Scholar.
  • The cost of the library databases and the articles within them are already part of the tuition and fees paid by students.
  • Most search engines (including Google and Bing) are created and maintained by for profit companies. Their primary goal is to make money.
  • It is possible for owners of webpages, for people, or for groups to manipulate a search engine to place their webpage/information higher onto the list of returns.  Some of these are labeled as ads, but some could look like legitimate information if the reader does not double check the information. Because of this, it may be necessary for you to scan several pages into the search results of an internet search before you get to the truly reliable, relevant information.
  • Information on the web and webpages get updated, deleted, and become outdated quickly.
  • There is no quality control or authority control on the Internet.  Anyone can create and post a webpage.
  • Search engines use relevance ranking.  This means the search engine looks at your past behavior and tries to anticipate what you need.
    • This ranking is very helpful when you are looking for a donut shop near you.
    • It is not helpful when you are looking for an academically suitable source for your paper on William Faulkner.

How can you tell if the information you found on the Internet is something you can trust and use or share?  Here are some important questions you can ask about the source as you browse to make sure you are finding and using the best information.

  • Is there obvious, extreme bias in the page you are reading? 
  • Does the page acknowledge more than one point of view? 
  • How many ads are there on the page and what are they trying to sell?
  • Who are the author and the publisher of the page?  Are they qualified to speak about the subject of the page?  Would you trust your English professor to change your tires?  Or would you trust your mechanic to help you write your English paper?  The same concept applies to the creators of the information you come across online.
  • Is the page from a .edu or .gov site?  These are not necessarily the only trustworthy sites available to you, but they are less likely to contain ads, bias, or untrustworthy information than a .com or a .org.
  • Has the page been updated recently?  Does it look like someone is updating it on a regular basis?  
  • Does it look like it was professionally created?  Do all the links, videos, pictures work?
  • Have you looked at/compared several articles from the first or second page of results to get a sense of what is out there before starting to read individual pages?  Getting a feel for what information is out there will help you pick the sources that are likely to be most useful for your current project.
  • Is it easy to find where the information originated? Have you found the same information on several different pages?  Is there a consensus about the issue or piece of information?  It has become easier to manipulate information online.  The information may have been taken out of context, or the information may have been changed.

Images representing each of the 4 moves in SIFT

CRAAP Test

Use the these resources to find factual statements from primary source materials:

Pros
Cons
An encyclopedia is a great place to start your research                                             
You should never use tertiary sources like encyclopedias and dictionaries as citations
Wikipedia gives you a general understanding of a topic
You don't know who posted what information on Wikipedia
Reading Wikipedia Articles will help you develop your search topic
Only articles edited frequently by a large number of editors and over a long period of time will be arguably neutral and mostly free of bias
You can use Wikipedia articles to identify keywords you can use to search other databases
Any misinformation within an articles takes time to find and remove from the Wikipedia article
You can use the references, citations and related works provided on the page to find more academic articles to use
Like all encyclopedias, Wikipedia should never be the beginning and end of your search

Things to keep in mind while you are using Wikipedia.

  • Tertiary sources (encyclopedia, dictionaries, etc., including Wikipedia) should be used as starting places in your research, but they should not be cited on your References or Works Cited pages or be the only type of source you use as a basis for your paper.
  • Encyclopedias are great places to learn more about your topic and to identify keywords that you can use to form searches in other databases.  This is because encyclopedias are written for a general audience who are not experts in the subject matter.  Other sources are written by subject matter experts to be subject specific and so will be more detailed.
  • Because you do not know who contributed what to a Wikipedia page, you do not know if contributors possess the authority to write about the subject.  Are they subject matter experts or are they just interested in that particular subject?
  • Anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, but the majority of contributors are white men with an academic background.  This can lead some articles to be less neutral or to have noticeable bias.  Readers should always read Wikipedia articles critically.
  • Some Wikipedia pages have existed for a longer period of time and have been extensively edited, so they can be considered more trustworthy.
  • Look for the Featured and Good articles as these have been edited to different standards than the basic pages.  A Featured Article will have a gold star to the far right of the title.  A Good Article will have a green circle with a plus sign in the middle in the same place.

  • There are links and references embedded in Wikipedia articles.  Clicking on these will help you find more reputable sources that you can use and cite for your assignments.

  • If the books and articles cited in the Wikipedia articles are not available for free online, you can search for them using Primo, the CSCC Library Catalog.

  • Despite policies and procedures in place to ensure reliable content on Wikipedia, some errors do exist.  Not all of these errors are fixed immediately.  Some errors are fixed quickly, but some can exist on a Wikipedia page for months.
  • No matter where you find information for your paper, it is always a good idea to double check the information that you intend to use and cite in your paper.  Find the same information in more than one location before you consider it to be reliable.

If you have more questions about how Wikipedia works or how you can use this resource for your assignments, take a look at the Wikipedia: Academic Use and Wikipedia: About articles.