1. How do I find some and how can I tell if what I’m reading is reliable and isn’t just a bunch of baloney? A Short Guide to Finding and Assessing the Validity of a Web Resource By Melody Poland Snider

2.  Search engines  Google: google.com  Altavista: altavista.com  Google Scholar: scholar.google.com Figure out my keywords—now is not the time for complete sentences! I don’t want to confuse my search engine’s spiders…just important words, please. I’m writing a paper all about frogs so I want keywords like frogs + “life cycle” I join keywords with plus signs and put phrases in quotation marks What other keywords can you think of for frogs?  Search engines  Google: google.com  Altavista: altavista.com  Google Scholar: scholar.google.com Figure out my keywords—now is not the time for complete sentences! I don’t want to confuse my search engine’s spiders…just important words, please. I’m writing a paper all about frogs so I want keywords like frogs + “life cycle” I join keywords with plus signs and put phrases in quotation marks What other keywords can you think of for frogs? Frogs… frogs… looking for frogs

3.  I need to test and see if this site is telling me the true facts about my research subject.  First, WHERE is this site? Look at the domain name in the address bar…. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog Beware of Wikipedia, because anyone can add or change information. It’s better to look at the bibliography of the Wikipedia article and go straight to the sources where the author got his facts. wdfw.wa.gov/living/frogs.html This one is a.gov site, which tells me it is sponsored by the government and is more likely to be trustworthy…and sure enough, this site is written by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. This might be a good place to start!

4.  Type into your address bar: scholar.google.com  Choose “Articles”  Input your keywords (I used amphibian + life cycle  I found an article called “Life cycle stages of the amphibian chytrid Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis,” so I clicked on it. It was an article written by scientists, published in a scientific journal called Diseases of Aquatic Organisms. Another good place to find trusted facts!

5.  Anyone can own a site that includes: .com .org .net  United States government sites always have: .gov  Schools often use: .k12  Universities in the United States use: .edu

6.  Where does the site come from?  Does the author back up his facts with resources in a bibliography?  Can I check his sources?  Are there links to other sites?  Are those sites written by the same author?  I found a site with.edu. That means it’s a trusted university site, right?  Is there a “~” or a “%” in the address? That could mean it’s a personal page on the university site.

7. Bibliography Searching the World Wide Web: Overview http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/558/01/ Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/ Evaluate.html Resources