Finding, Evaluating, and Citing World Wide Web Resources
Finding Websites
• Finding information on the World Wide Web can be
time-consuming and frustrating. To better your chances of retrieving relevant,
reliable information, first try to find sites recommended by known authorities,
like those linked from the Library's "Online Resources, by Academic
Department" page.
• If you don't find what you need there, use a general search engine,
like Google, but remember that your choice of keywords in large part determines
the success or failure of your search. So be clever and persistent.
• Also, most search engines have an "advanced search" feature
which enables you to limit your search in a variety of helpful ways, for
instance by specifying how the words you input are deployed by the search
engine, or restricting the search to a particular "domain" (i.e.
".edu" or ".com"), or to pages which contain images;
spend a few minutes exploring your options, and use them.
Evaluating Websites
• Traditional editorial practices and library selection
policies usually insure that you can count on the information in books
and journal articles. On the Web, on the other hand, anyone can publish,
and not all the information mounted is trustworthy. It becomes a user's
job to determine if it is or isn't. What's more, Web resources change
frequently making evaluation at any point in time problematic.
• Adequate evaluation always requires evidence, at least, of who's
sponsoring and authoring the information, when the information was collected,
and what criteria were used for including particular information. Look
around a site and, if such evidence isn't fairly clearly displayed, be
especially skeptical; it doesn't mean the information's bad, just that
it may not be verifiable.
• For a smart, thorough analysis of how to assess website reliability,
see WebSearch,
produced by Eddie Byrne, an Irish librarian; it's strongly recommended
that you spend a few minutes reading his suggestions before you begin
Web research.
Citing Websites
• Sources on the World Wide Web that students and scholars
use in their research include scholarly projects, reference databases,
the texts of books, articles in periodicals, and professional and personal
sites. As in bibliographies of printed sources, information provided in
a works-cited list should lead a reader easily to the source.
• Entries should contain, at least, the name of the author, editor,
or compiler of the website, its title, the name of any institution or
organization sponsoring or associated with the website, the date of electronic
publication and of the latest update, the date when the researcher accessed
the source, and its electronic address, or URL (in angle brackets:<...>).
• For more detail, consult the Library Homepage links to electronic
(and other) style manuals by clicking on "Research," then
"Reference," then "Style Manuals."
send comments to: Michael Kasper (mkasper)