Academic Resources

Evaluating Websites

Today, we are bombarded by information. We have to filter through information we receive from the television, radio, newspaper and the Internet, not to mention from our friends and family. With so much information coming our way, it is often difficult to determine just what’s credible, accurate and reliable. Thanks to the World Wide Web, anyone can be a publisher and writer; many people have personal websites designed to share their opinions with the rest of the world. On top of that, much of the information we receive is aimed at persuading us to buy something. And, while we usually can trust news commentators and the books, magazines and newspapers we read, there have been instances where someone blatantly lied to the public and published it. Examples here include the New York Times reporter who was fired for fraud, plagiarism and inaccuracies found in nearly half of the articles he wrote over a seven month period in 2002, and the autobiographical book on an author’s supposed experiences in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany; it turned out that the author was not Jewish, nor had he ever stepped foot in a concentration camp.

While these may be extreme cases of fraudulent information, the fact remains, we must all become good consumers of information. We must learn to evaluate what we read and hear in order to separate the good from the bad. As a student, you’ll also be expected to find information to back up points you are making in the papers you write. Using unreliable or false information in a paper can affect your credibility with your peers and your instructors (and sometimes your grade), so it is doubly important for you to have effective information evaluation skills. Listed below are links to some websites that can help you learn better skills at evaluating the information that comes your way.

• Evaluating Internet Research Sources (the CARS Criteria): (http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm)
• Critically Evaluating Information Sources (from the Cornell University Library): (http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill26.htm)
• Evaluating Sources of Information (from the Purdue OWL): (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_evalsource.html)
• Guide to Evaluating Information Sources (from the Fort Lewis College Library): (http://library.fortlewis.edu/reference/evaluate.html)

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