Evaluating Internet Resources

Citing Internet resources

• Academic sites - Web sites sponsored by a college or university, a research association, or an individual researcher/publisher with academic credentials.
• Organization sites - Web sites sponsored by organizations with a specific agenda to promote.  In this subject area, that agenda may be prevention, abstinence, harm reduction, controlled consumption, education, political action, etc.
• Commercial sites - Web sites sponsored by businesses with a specific goal to be realized from sponsorship.
• Individual sites - Web sites authored by persons, usually without academic credentials, who want to make a personal statement or relate experiences they have had with alcohol use, abuse, and recovery.  In many fields, this kind of resource would be disregarded.  In the alcoholism field, however, the long tradition of self help and grass roots organization legitimizes this sort of page.

What person or organization authored or sponsored this page?

If the author or sponsoring organization is not immediately apparent, here are some tips:
1.  Check the title bar (at the top of the screen).
2.  Check the URL (Web address).
3.  Scroll to the end and look for names, dates, organization names and logos.
4.  Truncate the URL and thread your way back to the domain server.  (For example:  This web address is http://www.portup.com/~lburhans/eval.html.  Try using http://www.portup.com/~lburhans/.  If that doesn't give you the information you seek, try using http://www.portup.com.)

If you have heard of the person, organization, or company sponsoring the site, and if the sponsor has a good reputation, you may have greater confidence in the material you read.

If the page doesn't specify the audience up front, try to figure this out from the content.  Unless you or other researchers are the target, the page may not be a good reference for academic information.

This information should appear at the end of the page.  Scroll down to look for it.  This date will indicate the currency of the information by letting you know when the author(s) last reviewed the material they had published.

By reading the page, you should be able to determine whether the page was published to sell something, to educate, to promote a particular point of view, to entertain, etc.  By guessing the purpose of the site, you will be able to evaluate the material for bias and inaccuracies.

Sites maintained by well known organizations, companies, and universities are likely to remain available in the future.  You want to be confident that you may return to the site again and find the same type of information.  However, all information on the Internet is subject to change and revision daily.  If you find good information you want to use for research, print the page if you have any doubt as to its longevity. (Your level of anxiety may be a tip off to the general validity of the source.)  Printing at least one page of the site will also provide you the URL and date accessed for future reference.  Saving the page to your hard drive will preserve the information in a form your browser can read, but does not always save the URL or the date accessed.

Do the links work?  Can you navigate around the page and within the site reliably?  Does the site display on your browser?  Does it load in a reasonable length of time?

The Internet has more information than any one person can comprehend.  Many of the side roads you find while researching may be more interesting than the subject you began studying.  Interesting doesn't always equate to useful.  Does the page contain information that answers your questions or otherwise meets your academic need?

What the Experts Say. . .

ICYouSee: T is for Thinking, Ithaca College Library (Ithaca, NY)

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly,  New Mexico State University Library (Las Cruces, NM)

Web Source Evaluation Techniques, A PowerPoint® Presentation from Widener University (Chester, PA)
 

How to Cite Electronic References

Citing Electronic Sources, The Learning Page , The Library of Congress (Washington, DC)

Citing Internet Sources, Northern Michigan University Library (Marquette, MI)

Finding and Evaluating Information: The Quick Guide, Cornell University Library