Swimming with sharks

1
Swimming with sharks

• Using the open Web for research (Abridged)
• Larissa Moebs, MLIS, MA
• Public Services Librarian
• Illinois Central College
• February 2006

2
Common ideas relating to the web

• Everything a researcher needs is on the open web
  anymore
  
• Everything on the web is easy to find
• Only people who know what theyre talking about
  publish on the web (the Its in print, so it
  must be true syndrome)
  
• The first result of a search is usually the best

3
Why Evaluate, then?

• First, and most importantly
• Anyone can publish anything on the Web
• (and usually does.)

• The remainder of the list gets pretty long

4

• Web resources rarely have editors or
  fact-checkers (therefore no standards exist to
  ensure accuracy of information)
  
• Its often difficult to determine authorship, and
  even if the author is listed, their
  qualifications usually arent
  
• Sponsorship (and the goals of those sponsors)
  isnt usually indicated
  
• Often the web serves as a virtual soapbox where
  people are voicing unsubstantiated opinions and
  using every rhetorical trick they know to gain
  agreement without offering all of the facts
• And more

5

• Publication and/or revision dates are not always
  provided
  
• If the date is provided it can have several
  possible meanings, including
  
• When the material was first written
• When the material was first placed on the web
• When the material was last revised
• When the site itself was last updated therefore
  having no bearing on the material
  
• When the page/site was last visited
• Finally

6

• Sometimes web information is just for fun or
  outright silliness
  

With all of this in mind why use the web? And
if you do, how can you do so without getting
suckered?
7
Be a Good Investigator

• Remember those old reporter questions of Who,
  what, where, when, how and why? These will
  stand you in good stead when asked regarding the
  viability of any resource

8
Who?

• Can you determine who put this page together?
  What might it mean if you cant?
  
• What are the background, credentials, and
  authority of the web pages/sites author?
  
• How can you verify the authors claims to
  authority?

9
What (the meat of the page)

• How would you verify the information on this
  site/page? Where would you find corroborating
  materials? What might it mean if you cant find
  any?
• Are there any sponsorship affiliations? What
  bearing do they have on the contents accuracy?
  

10
More of What

• Does the page/site really provide information on
  all of the aspects it claims to cover?
  
• Is the information provided uniformly complete
  for all of the aspects and areas the page/site
  claims to cover? Is it biased to contain a lot
  of information on one area to the detriment of
  discussing other areas? What bearing does the
  answer to these questions have on your decision
  to use this page/site?

11
When

• What does current mean for this webpage/site?
  What is the most current date you can find?
  
• Is the date labeled as to what it represents? If
  not, what might it be (see slide 5 for a review
  of date possiblities)?
  
• How important is it relative to your topic that
  the material be current?
  

12
How

• How does the author present the information? Is
  it presented as fact, opinion or conjecture? Is
  it clearly labeled as such?
  
• Does the page/site present more than one
  viewpoint/opinion? What ramifications does that
  have in its use for your research?
  
• Can you determine a sponsor for the page? Do they
  promote a specific viewpoint or opinion? Who is
  it? What is the opinion? How does this affect the
  information for your research?

13
Why

• Why has the author created this page?
• Why is the sponsor making it available?
• Why are the above people allowing free access?

14
After youve asked all the questions

• If you answer all of these questions and are
  satisfied with the results, then you probably
  have a decent resource for use
  
• HOWEVER If you have ANY doubts about the
  site/page, dont trust it!!!!

15
Other hints to help you swim

• Look at the URLs carefully
• Check out invisible web resources
• Give credit where credit is due!

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URL hints

• .com
• community domain
• anyone can publish anything
• generally the least reliable for quality
  information
  
• .net
• network domain
• Historically the purview of businesses, but
  expanded to include private citizens
  
• Usually a little more reliable than .com, but not
  much
  
• .org
• organization domain
• Any organization can create a site with this
  domain, even if its not what the parent
  organization is about
  
• Still more reliable than the above
• .edu
• education domain
• Any educational insitution can publish to this
• Generally the most reliable of the public domains

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More URLs

• .gov
• The official domain of the United States
  government
  
• Highly reliable dependent upon personal opinion
  of government information
  
• .il (or other state 2 letter code)
• Official domain name for the materials provided
  by the state listed
  
• Same caveat as .gov
• .de, .jp, .uk, .au
• Examples of foreign site domain codes
• .de Deutschland Germany
• .jp Japan
• .uk United Kingdom England and associated
  islands
  
• .au Australia
• Most foreign countries do not follow the same
  coding process as the US, so you wont get the
  other cues as you do on the prior page from the
  URL (site/page requires even more scrutiny)

18
The Invisible Web

• Pages that search engines dont regularly return
• Divided into
• Opaque Web Sites that arent linked to other
  sites
  
• In other words, you have to actually put in the
  URL by hand to get there
  
• Private Web Sites that are blocked by a
  password
  
• These might be free (e.g., My Yahoo and a
  personalized Google homepage)
  
• Proprietary Web Pay-to-view sites
• Our library electronic resources
• Usually contain top quality information!

Adapted from Whelan, David. The Invisible Web
Forbes. 11/1/04 1749, 74.
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Directories of the Invisible Web

• Complete Planet http//www.completeplanet.com
• Infomine http//infomine.ucr.edu
• Librarians Internet Index http//lii.org
• Invisible Web http//www.profusion.com/nav
• Open Directory Project http//dmoz.org

20
The P word

• Plagiarism is a form of theft and can be
  considered outright illegal.
  
• Fundamentally, it is taking credit for someone
  elses ideas or words and work as your own by not
  giving them credit when you quote or paraphrase
  them
• It applies to web resources exactly the same way
  as it applies to anything in print or found in an
  electronic database (journal).
  
• Give credit where credit is due, and you wont
  run into problems.

21
Taking a swim

• Now that youve learned how to identify the
  sharks, its time to swim. There are example
  evaluations for you to review as .wmv files in
  the same section where you found this.