INFORMATION LITERACY AND THE EVALUATION OF WEB SITES
by Barb Fulara
November 16, 2009
INFORMATION LITERACY AND WEB SITE EVALUATION
WEB SITE EVALUATION
With so much information available on the Internet, it is imperative that students doing research evaluate the reliability of the information that they obtain from the Internet. The failure to be "a wise consumer of information" may result not only in a failed assignment, but also in the use of false, unreliable, or even harmful information.
To check the publisher of a web site, go to: www.easywhois.com.
To check the history of a site, go to: The Wayback Machine: www.archive.org
To check the external links: To find the external links, conduct this search in Alta Vista with the link: command. Go to Alta Vista www.altavista.com, type link: in the search box and then add the URL of the site you would like research.
A generated list of external links potentially gives you a range of thoughts or comments about any given Web page.
External links are like digital threads that come from other sites. They may be made by anyone in the world. Any author can choose to link to a document; an author may even choose to link to his/her own work. External links are invisible. Unlike forward links, which are controlled by a web site author, anyone in the world can create a link to a web site from an external source. There are no link police!
Examining a web site's external links is an important step in validating Internet information. In validating, ask three questions:
1. Who is linked to the web site? Look to see what other groups or individuals have linked to the site. Are they universities, schools or commercial sites? Read the URLs and titles of external links carefully. Look to see if there is a pattern in the types of sites linked.
2. What is the purpose of the link? Why have groups or individuals chosen to link to this site? Web authors choose to link to other sites for specific purposes. Speculate on what those purposes might be.
3. What do other sites say about the information on the site? Gain perspective about a web site by reading what another site tells you about it. Cross-reference information and look for hidden bias.
How to read a web address:
The goal is to make judgments about web site information based
upon what the URL tells you. Here are three guiding questions that
can help.
1. Do you recognize the domain name?
The domain name is found after the http:// and www. to the first forward slash /. For example in the URL www.novemberlearning.com, novemberlearning.com is the domain name.
A domain name can sometimes provide clues about the quality of information of a site or tell you what a site is about.
2. What is the extension in the domain name?
.com and .net are examples of extensions. Extensions are an important part of domain names. You probably know quite a few already. Extensions are intended to show the type of establishment that owns and publishes the domain. Here is a list to look for:
COMMON EXTENSIONS
.edu Educational organization (most US universities)
.k12 US school site (not all US schools use this)
.ac Academic institution (outside of US)
.sch School site (some schools outside of the US use this)
.com Company (usually .co in the UK)
.org Any organization
.gov Government agency
.net Network
.mil Military institution
New extensions to look for are .biz, .name, .pro, .info. All are used for commercial purposes.
Extensions can also include country codes, such as .uk, .ca, .za, etc. For a complete list refer to: http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/text/web_country_codes.html
Some extensions may provide more reliable information than others, but there are no guarantees. Ones that may be more reliable are .edu, .gov, .k12. Ones to watch out for are .com, .org, .net. These domains can be purchased by anybody. This is not to say that sites with these extensions can never be trusted, but it is good to know whether you are on a commercial or special interest-type site if you are trying to access academic-type information.
3. Are you on a personal page?
You may or may not recognize the domain name or extension of a URL. Keep reading past the first forward slash / for more clues. If you are on a personal page the information you are reading may or may not be trustworthy.
A personal page is a web site created by an individual. The web site may contain useful information, links to important resources and helpful facts, but sometimes these pages offer highly biased opinions.
The presence of a name in the URL such as jdoe and a tilde ~ or % or the word users or people or members frequently means you are on a personal web site.
Even if a site has the extension, .edu, you still need to keep a look out for personal pages. Case in point is this web site previously available and published by a professor at Northwestern University: http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html
This site is a Holocaust Revisionist site that argues that the Holocaust did not take place. Although this site contains a domain name we should be able to trust northwestern.edu, the tilde ~ followed by someone's name, abutz tell us that this is a personal posting and not an official Northwestern page.
**Today, Professor Butz's site, describing the holocaust as an historic myth is no longer available at the original address. In fact, when you type in the address a screen from Northwestern appears that says the site is no longer available. The message is only accurate in part. The site is no longer available at the original address but it is available if you know how to research the history of a website with a special tool called the Wayback Machine. (see section VI)
To use Professor Butz's site, you will be directed to an
archived address of the original site:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041012180151/pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html
Notice the second half of this URL. You'll see that this second half shows the actual former address of the site.**
QUESTIONS TO ASK
1. Authority
-Is there an author?
-Is the author qualified?
-Who is the sponsor?
2. Accuracy
-Is the information reliable and error-free?
-Is there an editor or someone who verifies/checks the information?
-How reliable are the pages the site links to?
-What information on the topic is also available through traditional sources like newspapers, magazines, or encyclopedias?
3. Objectivity
-Does the information show a minimum of bias?
-Is the page designed to sway opinion?
-Is there any advertising on the page?
-What evidence is provided to support opinions and conclusions that are shown on the document?
4. Currency
-Is the page dated?
-If so, when was the last update?
-How current are the links?
5. Coverage
-What topics are covered?
-Can the information be found somewhere else?
-How in-depth is the material?
The following is a list of bogus(false) web sites. Use the above evaluation criteria and check the accuracy or inaccuracy of these sites. Some were created just for fun. Others (the Martin Luther King site,for example) is not only false and biased. It is bigoted and racist in content.
BOGUS WEB SITES
California’s Velcro Crop Under Challenge: http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html
The Ova Prima Foundation: http://www.ovaprima.org/index.htm
Dihydrogen Monoxide: http://www.dhmo.org
Dog Island Free Forever:http://www.thedogisland.com
Martin Luther King: http://www.martinlutherking.org
The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus: http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html
Buy Dehydrated Water: http://www.buydehydratedwater.com
McWhortle Enterprises: http://www.mcwhortle.com
*Information for this article is taken from novemberlearning.com and from “The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly or Why It’s a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sites” by Susan E. Beck, NMSU library.
