Study Skills for 6th Form. Evaluating websites guide – University of Reading. There is a huge amount of information on the Internet but its quality is variable.
Follow these tips to help you evaluate what's good and what's not! You could also try out the Internet Detective Tutorial for help on evaluating websites. Alternatives to websites... If you are looking for information on a topic for an essay, project or seminar use the databases for your subject. These are guaranteed to give you good references to reliable, published information - some may even give you full-text articles. Find databases in your subject Key websites for your subject To help guide you through the mass of information on the Internet your liaison librarian has identified some key web sites. Go to the useful websites guide for your subject Before believing the information given on a web site, or quoting it in your essay or project, think about the following: Authority Who is responsible for the page/site? Accuracy and reliability Is the information correct? Currency Can you tell how up-to-date it is?
5ws.pdf. Evaluating web sources. The web contains many hundreds of millions of pages, including everything from rigorous research to trivia and misinformation.
The following information will help you work out whether the information you’ve found on the Web is appropriate to use in your academic work, whether you can learn anything useful from it, and whether it’s going to gain you marks – or lose them! But if I find something on the Web, it’s all right to use it, isn’t it? That depends. Some people think of the Web as like a library, full of information – but it’s a “library” where anyone can just walk in with something they’ve written (or made up!)
And put it on the shelf, and where the newspapers, books, films and celebrity gossip magazines are all mixed up together. So how do I evaluate a Web source? Ask yourself some questions about it. Ask yourself: What? What is being said? Who is saying it? Can I trust the person or organisation behind this Web page? Where are they from? Why are they saying it? Web sites: Books. Evalweb.pdf. UWE Library Services: Guide for Evaluating Internet Sources. The Internet is an uncontrolled environment, anyone can post any information to it for any purpose and at any time.
It is therefore useful to bear in mind the following questions to help you evaluate websites and make sure that the information you use is of good quality. Who is the information provider? Are they a reliable source of this information? Why is the information provided? When was it last updated? Accuracy. Is the information reliable and error free? Authority. Who is the author or producer/publisher? Coverage. Are the scope and limits clearly stated? Currency. Is the page dated? Objectivity. Does the information suggest any kind of bias? Sources. This document is an amalgamation of ideas from the following publications:ALEXANDER, J. and MARSHA, T., 1996.