Week 9

INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Evaluation of Internet Sources

 

Introduction

Why Evaluate?

Criteria for evaluating Internet Sources

Purpose

Scope/Coverage/Comprehensiveness

Authority

Audience

Information content

Design and layout

Acces/Workabilitys

 

Introduction

 

The availability and growth of the Internet offers all of us, the opportunity to find information and data from all over the world.

 

Internet resources, in particular World Wide Web resources, continue to proliferate at an astonishing rate.

 

Some experts say that a new site is placed online every 3 seconds!.

 

It is possible for almost anyone to place anything on the Internet.

 

Companies, organizations, educational institutions, communities and individual people all serve as information providers for the electronic Internet community

 

This sharing of resources and information is an example of societal cooperation on a grand scale and has fostered professional and personal communications throughout the world.   

Why Evaluate ?

 

When we use a research or academic library, the books, journals and other resources have already been evaluated by a librarian or by a mechanism set up by a librarian.When we use an index or a database to find information on any given topic, the index or database is often produced by a professional or scholarly organization that selects the journals to be indexed on the basis of their quality.Every resource we find has been evaluated in one way or another, before we ever see it. When we are using the World Wide Web, none of this applies.There are no filters in between us and the Internet.Now that anyone with access to a server and a passing knowledge of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) can put information on the Internet, the problem has become one of sifting through a mass of advertising material and vanity publications in order to find information of high quality. Information can be spread over the Internet by anyone without regard to accuracy, validity, or bias.Due to its global structure, which encompasses a variety of legal systems and cultures, it is unlikely any one individual or nation will be able to significantly influence, regulate, or change the chaotic state of flux that characterizes the World Wide Web. So using and citing information found over the Web is a little like swimming on a beach without a lifeguard.Hence there is a need for librarians to evaluate Internet information sources in order to decide whether an Internet information source should be linked to a resource guide or library Web site. To judge the quality or appropriateness of information for a particular query or user.Many libraries now maintain Web sites that have lists of Internet information resources.The development of subject resource guides is seen as a logical role for librarians, extending to the online environment the traditional librarian's role of evaluating, selecting, and organizing published information.It is part of the job of many of us - librarians or information managers - to select what our users will find useful from this mass of information.

Criteria for evaluating Resources

Resources should be evaluated on the basis of the following broad levels of analysis

 

Purpose

 

What is the purpose of the resource?

 

# Resource should make their purpose obvious at first sight.

# Does the site promote a product?

# Does the resource fulfill the stated purpose?

# If a site provides its own mission statement, the user can verify whether the content matches this statement

# A good resource will not be ambiguous and will not deflect potential users, due to its poor communication of purpose.

 

    scope

       1.What subject is covered?
      2.Does the resource cover a subject adequately?
     3.Breadth: Are all aspects of the subject covered?
     4.Depth: To what level of detail in the subject does the resource go?
    5.Time: Is the information in the resource limited to certain time periods?
   6.Format: Are certain kinds of Internet resources (for example telnet, Gopher, FTP) excluded? 
 
Authority
 

No matter if it’s a web page, article or a book, you need to determine who is responsible for the information and how qualified that person or body is to write on the subject. Don’t accept words or opinions without knowing something about who wrote them.

 

• 1.What are the author’s credentials?
• 2.What is the author's education, experience and/or occupation?
• 3.Is he/she qualified to write on the topic?
• 4.What institution, organization or company is the author affiliated with?
• 5.What organization or body published the information? Is it authoritative?

Audience

For whom is the information being written? Scan the entire work. Check the title, the abstract, the table of contents, the site map, and/or the index for clues . Popular works are geared toward the general public. Scholarly and trade publications are written for people with specialized knowledge. If you encounter a lot of unfamiliar jargon you may want to use a less specialized source. Accuracy Consider whether the information from a source is presented as fact, opinion or propaganda? Reliable sources make use of factual information that is well-supported. Objectivity & Bias Objectivity means the information is presented impartially with an absence of bias. Sources are rarely 100% objective. An author may present their perspective, however, a forthright author will be honest about his/her bias. A reliable work will also be well-supported.   To get a sense of a journal's point of view or bias, look at the names of the authors contributing pieces along with their backgrounds. Check out the focus of several articles within a few issues