Evaluating Print and Web Sources

 

When you start looking for sources to write a paper or give a report, you must evaluate the publication and writer to base your work on solid research.

Even though the internet may be your first choice to do research, evaluating a web source is more difficult: anyone can publish an on-line document. However, the process for evaluating an electronic source is similar to a print source. You need to:

1. Determine if the source is primary or secondary.
   
2. Distinguish between the facts and opinions of the writer.
   
3. Examine the arguments (opinions) of the writer is to see if they are fallacies.

Remember as you gather research, you need to write down the citation for each source, so you can credit the pages, Web site addresses, authors, and books you used.

When you are ready to evaluate Web sources, please visit our Web Sources Exercise.
 

Evaluating Print Sources

For Printed Materials Question The Following:

AUTHORITY

• Are the author's qualifications, such as education, occupation or position listed?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• Does the publication include a reference list or bibliography showing that the author has researched the topic?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• Do you know if the publisher is reputable?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• If the author is a group, educational institution or government body, is it known to be knowledgeable about the subject?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

SCOPE AND CONTENT

• Is the subject matter covered relevant to your topic?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• If the coverage is limited, does it still help to meet your needs?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• Do you feel that you will be able to distinguish between fact and opinion?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

DATE

• Based on the date of publication, will the facts or opinions given in this publication be outdated for your purposes?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• Will other sources, such as newspaper articles or Internet information be needed to obtain more recent data?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• If this is a web resource, can you tell when it was published and last revised?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

INTENDED AUDIENCE

• Is this a scholarly publication, intended for an academic audience, or one knowledgeable about the subject area?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• Is this resource of a more popular nature, written for people with no special expertise about the subject?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

PURPOSE

• Is the major purpose of this publication to inform?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• Would you say that the coverage is biased, or limited to one point of view?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

• Is the purpose to persuade? Does this bias the content?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

COMPARED WITH OTHER AVAILABLE RESOURCES

• Does this resource appear to be one you would choose to use?
  Yes/No/Don't Know

CONCLUSIONS

• Based on the information you have collected above, do you have any reservations about using this resource?
  Yes/No

• Overall, this publication is suitable for use as a resource for my purposes.
  Yes/No
  

Print out a copy of our evaluating sources checklist to take with you when examining the worth of sources at your library.

 

Evaluating WWW Resources

A typical Web site has the following elements:

Header
Body
Footer

The header, body, and footer are much like the title page (header), content (body), and bibliographic information (footer) of a book or journal article. Sometimes internal links, or hypertext, serve the same function as footnotes or end notes would in a traditional resource.

Many of the same questions found in the print resources checklist can be applied to evaluating Web sources. You are mainly concerned with

Authority
Scope and Content
Date
Intendend Audience
Purpose

Ready to visit our Web Sources Exercise to test your expertise?

If you need further assistance to evaluate web resources check out the site listed below:

Knowing what to use from the Web
 

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last updated on 3/30/99