Introduction | Evaluate Your Needs | Information Sources & Tips | Basic Search Strategy | Evaluating and Verifying Resources

Critical thinking skills have always been important to the process of searching for and using information from media such as books, journal articles, radio broadcasts, television reports, and so forth. With the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web, these skills have become even more crucial. Traditional books and journal articles need to pass some kind of editorial scrutiny before being published. Web pages, however, can appear without a single person ever reading them through to check for accuracy. Libraries have collection development policies that govern what material they will and will not buy; the Internet and Web, having no such policies, collect anything. This isn't to say that there isn't quality on the Internet. There are thousands of high caliber Web pages and well-regarded databases. In order to find these quality resources, we must make it our responsibility to

• evaluate our information needs
• choose an appropriate search tool
• formulate a search expression that will select the most relevant resources
• decide, using well-established guidelines, whether the Web page or Internet resource is worth using in our research paper or project

• Current information.
Many newspapers and popular magazines provide Web versions of their publications and news updates throughout the day. Current financial and weather information is also easily accessible. For an example, see TotalNEWS, http://www.totalnews.com for links to dozens of news sources.

• U.S. government information.
Most federal, state, and local government agencies provide statistics and other information freely and in a timely manner. The University of Michigan's Document Center,  http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/, is an excellent starting point for government documents.
• Popular culture.
It's easy to find information on the latest movie or best-selling book. Try Amazon.com , at http://www.amazon.com for current book reviews.
• Full-text versions of books and other materials that are not under copyright restriction.
For example, there are Shakespeare's plays, the Bible, the Canterbury Tales, and hundreds of other full text literary resources available. The Internet Public Library's Online Text Collection has collected most of them at http://www.ipl.org/reading/books
• Business and company information.
Many companies not only provide their Web pages and annual reports, there are also several databases that provide in-depth financial and other information about companies. Hoover's Online , at http://www.hoovers.com provides a database of public and some private company information.
• Consumer information.
The Internet is a virtual gold mine of information for people who are interested in buying a particular item and want opinions from people about the item. Try searching Google Groups , http://groups.google.com, the next time you want to get opinions about that new automobile or vacuum cleaner you are thinking of buying.
• Medical information.
In addition to several excellent sources of medical information provided by hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and non-profit organizations, The National Library of Medicine has provided the MEDLINE database to the public for free since late 1997. Check out PubMed's MEDLINE, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed , for your medical research questions.
• Unique archival sites.
For example, the Library of Congress' American Memory Collection, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/mdbquery.html , provides full-text documents, musical recordings, photographs, maps, and more about certain periods of American history.

• Publishing companies and authors who make money by creating and providing information will choose to use the traditional publishing marketplace and not make the information free via the Internet.
• Scholars most often choose to publish their research in reputable scholarly journals and university presses rather than use the Web to distribute their research. Surely more academic journals are becoming Web-based, but these journals cost as much money as subscribing to the paper form.
• Several organizations and institutions would like to publish valuable information on the Web but don't because of a lack of staff or funding to allow it.
• The Web tends to include information that is in demand to a large portion of the public. The Web can't be relied upon consistently for historical information. For example, if you needed today's weather data for Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Web will certainly have it. But if you wanted Minneapolis climatic data for November of 1976, you might not find it on the Web.

Information Sources Available on the Web

 
Learn the Features and Capabilities of a Search Tool or Service

• Get to know the features and capabilities of the search tool you'll use.
• Click on Help or Tips. (Read it!)
• See if there is a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) -- Browse through it.

• Features:

• What type of Boolean expressions does it support? (AND, OR, NOT, + -)
• What about truncation and wildcards? (What's matched by comput* ?)
• Does it support phrase searching?
• Proximity? (Terms near each other.)
• Field Searching? (title, URL, domain, etc.)
• Can you limit results by date or domain?
• Can you make choices about the way results are reported?
• How are results listed: by relevance or popularity?
• Is it possible to narrow or revise a search?
• Is help provided for forming search expressions?
• What's the coverage?

Basic Search Strategy: The Ten Steps

The following list provides a guideline for you to follow in formulating search requests, viewing search results, and modifying search results. These procedures can be followed for virtually any search request, from the simplest to the most complicated. For some search requests, you may not want or need to go through a formal search strategy. If you want to save time in the long run, however, it's a good idea to follow a strategy, especially when you're new to a particular search engine.

A basic search strategy can help you get used to each search engine's features and how they are expressed in the search query. Following the 10 steps will also ensure good results if your search is multifaceted and you want to get the most relevant results.

1. Identify the important concepts of your search.
2. Choose the keywords that describe these concepts.
3. Determine whether there are synonyms, related terms, or other variations of the keywords that should be included.
4. Determine which search features may apply, i.e., truncation, proximity operators, Boolean operators, etc.
5. Choose a search engine.
6. Read the search instructions on the search engine's home page. Look for sections entitled help, advanced search, frequently asked questions, etc.
7. Create a search expression, using syntax, which is appropriate for the search engine.
8. Evaluate the results. Are the results relevant to your query?
9. Modify your search if needed. Go back to steps 2-4 and revise your query accordingly.
10. Try the same search in a different search engine, following steps 5-9 above.

For multi-faceted searches a full-text database is best. For a search involving one facet like a person's name or a phrase without stop words, search engines that provide keyword indexing will be sufficient.

After determining whether your search has yielded too few Web pages (low recall), there are several things to consider:

• Perhaps the search expression was too specific; go back and remove some terms that are connected by ANDs.
• Perhaps there are more possible terms to use. Think of more synonyms to OR together. Try truncating more words if possible.
• Check spelling and syntax (a forgotten quotation mark or a missing parentheses)
• Read the instructions on the help pages again.

• Narrow your search to specific fields, if possible.
• Use more specific terms; i.e., instead of sorting, use a specific type of sorting algorithm.
• Add additional terms with AND or NOT.
• Remove some synonyms if possible.

Information on the World Wide Web About Evaluating Resources
 

• Bibliography on Evaluating Internet Resources, http://www.lib.vt.edu/help/instruct/evaluate/evalbiblio.html,  Nicole Auer, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 
• Evaluating Quality on the Net, http://www.hopetillman.com/findqual.html,  Hope N. Tillman, Babson College. 
• Evaluating Information Found on the Internet , http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/, Elizabeth Kirk, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University. 
• Significance,  http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/signif.htm, Iowa State University. 
• Thinking Critically About Information on the Web, http://biome.ac.uk/sage/vine.html, Betty Anagnostelis, Alison Cooke, and Alison McNab.
• Evaluating Web Resources, http://www2.widener.edu/Wolfgram-Memorial-Library/webevaluation/webeval.htm, Jan Alexander and Marsha Tate, Wolfgram Memorial Library, Widener University. 

Evaluating and Verifying Resources
 

• Look for the name of the author or institution at the top or bottom of a Web page.
• Go to the home page for the site that hosts the information to find out about the organization.
• To find further information about the institution or author use a search engine to see what related information is available on the Web.
• Use Google Groups,  http://groups.google.com, to search archives of Usenet articles to find other information about the author or institution, and in the case of an individual to see what sorts of articles they've posted on Usenet.
• Check the top and bottom of a Web page for the date the information was last modified or updated. If no date is present look at View>Page Info if you're using Netscape.  

Who is the author or institution?

• If the author is a person, does the resource give biographical information?

• If the author is an institution, is there information provided about it?

• The VENONA Project,  http://www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/ - try http://www.nsa.gov
• Global Warming Unit, http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/letsnet/noframes/subjects/science/b5u1.html try http://commtechlab.msu.edu
• Emotionalism Explains Mindless Violence at Colorado High School http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/1999/may/crime.htm - try http://www.capitalismmagazine.com
• Substance Abuse in Popular Movies and Music, http://www.mediascope.org/pubs/ibriefs/supmm.htm  - try http://www.mediascope.org
 
• The URL can give clues to the authority of a source. A tilde ~ in the URL usually indicates that the document is a personal page rather than part of an institutional Web site.

Make note of the domain section of the URL, as follows:

• Use search tools for Web pages and Usenet postings (Google Groups ) to learn more about the author/institution.
• Use WHOIS Service at http://www.internic.net/whois.html to determine the registrant of the Web site. Use the domain name - not the URL. For example to check the page listed above "Substance Abuse in Popular Movies and Music" http://www.mediascope.org/pubs/ibriefs/supmm.htm, use mediascope.org for the WHOIS search.

How current is the information?

• Is there a date on the Web page that indicates when the page was placed on the Web?
• Is it clear when the page was last updated?
• If it's not clear from the Web page the click on View in Netscape menu bar and select Page Info to see if that tells when page was last updated.
• Is some of the information obviously out-of-date?
• Does the page creator mention how frequently the material is updated?

Title: Evaluating Information on the Internet and the Web
URL: http://webliminal.com/khartman/educom98.html