Evaluation of Information Sources: Authors Can Be Dogs

Ask yourself these seven questions to determine if a source of information is appropriate for your needs:

1. Who or What Is Responsible?

• What is the expertise of the person who wrote the information? Is there contact or biographic information provided? On the Web, can you find a link to the author's biography?

• If an organization or a company created the journal or Web site, information about their mission, history, and/or purpose should be available. A full address, including a phone number may be helpful.

2. What Subject(s) or Issue(s) Are Covered?

• What is the depth of coverage? Could you find as much or more information in an encyclopedia?

• Is the topic of the article or page clear?

• Is a bibliography to print sources or links to related sites included?

• Are ideas or products well described?

3. Is There a Bias?

• Are biases, if any, clearly stated?

• Read carefully to differentiate fact from opinion, and for ambiguity and manipulative reasoning.

• What is the motive for providing any given piece of information?

• Tougher to answer but equally important: what is not being said?

4. Is the Information Current?

• When was the article or Web page written, when it was published or mounted on the Web, and when it was last updated? If you can't tell by looking at the page itself, try viewing the directory. If the site is copyrighted, does it include a copyright date?

• Are dates on charts, graphs, and other statistical sources within the page clearly noted?

• Do the links work, or are there a lot of "dead" ones?

5. Is It Accurate?

• Are citations provided so facts can be verified independently?

• Are there spelling and/or grammatical errors? (The answer to this question should be "no".)

• Are the basic facts correct? Compare a few facts with another source of information.

• Is there any indication of who is responsible for the information? What is this person's expertise? (See item 1, above.)

6. Who Is the Audience?

• General public?

• Hobbyists?

• Professionals?

• Researchers?

• WCU students?

7. What is the PURPOSE of this information?
If you know the motive behind the creation of a work, you might be a better judge of its content.

ADVOCACY: Support a position on moral, political, or social issues. Sierra is a pro-environment magazine published by the Sierra Club. The URLs of advocacy pages often--but not always--end with ".org" to distinguish them as nonprofit organizations.  Examples:

• Democratic National Committee

     http://www.democrats.org/

• Republican National Committee

     http://www.rnc.org/

BUSINESS/MARKETING: Advocacy with a motive to sell! Many large companies have their own magazines like Delta's Sky Magazine. Other obvious business/ marketing information sources are infomercials on TV, and Web sites that usually--but not always-- have URLs ending with ".com" to indicate a commercial or for-profit site.  Examples:

• Amazon (they sell books)

     http://www.amazon.com/

• The Iguanas (they sell CDs)

     http://iguanas.com/

INFORMATION: Provide factual information such as research, factual data and statistics from journals, government publications and reference works. The Journal of the American Medical Association is a respected scholarly journal with articles on medical research. URLs for Web sites will vary, but the government-sponsored sites will always end with ".gov".  Examples:

• EDGAR Database of Corporate Information

     http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm

• Your Dictionary.com

     http://www.yourdictionary.com/

NEWS: Newspapers, newsmagazines, television and radio news programs. Newsweek and 20/20 are familiar news forums. Some news Web sites will have ".org" URLs and others will have ".com", depending on whether they are for-profit or nonprofit.  Examples:

• Charlotte Observer
  http://www.charlotteobserver.com/  

• National Public Radio
   http://www.npr.org/

PERSONAL: These can be the home pages of the Ph.D. next door or the kid down the street. URLs can end in ".com", ".org", ".net" (for network), or ".edu" (for educational institution), depending on the server that the page is located on.  Examples:

• Dollymania (a fan's tribute to Dolly Parton) 
  http://www.dollymania.net/glamour.html

• Luminarium (an award-winning literary site by a summa cum laude English grad.)  http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm