Even if a page has been signed, can you tell anything about the author's qualifications? Sometimes you can tell from the page's url whether the page is part of a government (.gov), commercial (.com), or educational (.edu) site. Is the page an advertisement? Could the author be biased?
Can you determine when the page was last updated? Does the page explicitly state the information source? Can the information be verified elsewhere?
Librarians at Swem have identified a number of resources on the Web that will help you learn what to look for as you judge a Web site and how to apply evaluative criteria. Spend some time here for safe surfing elsewhere!
Swem Library's Resource Evaluation Rubric is an easy-to-use tool that you can print out and complete for each work you are considering using as a source for a paper or project. The higher the work scores, the more like it is to be a high-quality source that you can trust.
Bibliography on Evaluating Internet Resources This list, compiled by Nicole Auer, a librarian at Virginia Tech, provides links to discussions of evaluative criteria, the need for such criteria, and the services that rate and evaluate Web sites.
WWW Virtual Library List of Links An extensive list by Alastair Smith, a librarian in New Zealand.
These are individual WWW sites that discuss evaluation criteria and strategies.
| Alastair Smith's list of criteria. | |
Librarians at the University of Alberta developed this list of criteria for education students, but they can be applied in nearly any discipline. |
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Elizabeth E. Kirk of Johns Hopkins University focuses on the issues of authorship, the publishing body, point of view or bias, accuracy, and currency. |
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Hope Tillman of Babson College discusses various rating systems for Web resources and criteria to apply independently. |
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An organization called Instructional Materials for Science Educators have developed criteria for evaluating science sites. |
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Librarians at Widener University offer checklists of criteria for various types of Web sites. |
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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources |
Susan Beck of the New Mexico State University Library provides evaluative criteria, exercises that allow students to compare sites of varying quality, suggestions for faculty who want to incorporate the Web into course assignments, and a bibliography. |
An online tutorial developed by staff at The Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol. With clearly written overviews, interactive quizzes, and worked examples, the tutorial teaches users the key elements of quality Internet information and offers practical tips for evaluating a variety of online resources. Free registration is required to allow users to return to the site as necessary and work through the tutorial at their own pace. |
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A list of criteria in question form from John R. Henderson of the Ithaca College Library, along with exercises students can do to evaluate real Web sites. |
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Esther Grassian of UCLA, an authority on Web evaluation, poses questions Web surfers should ask about the sites they use. |
