Searching on web Webtruth-how reliable is the information on web? Monika Kamenčev G12 Tomislav Ilišević G12

Contents Introduction Challenges in finding information on the web Strategies for finding information on the web How does each of the websites deal with the subject? Conclusion Sources

Introduction The Internet is a relatively new and untested information and communication medium.  We need to evaluate, expand, and adapt existing criteria for evaluating content, as well as develop new techniques. The Internet can very well be an unregulated and un-regulatable medium  it is the visitor to a website who must have both tools and responsibility to discern quality websites.

Challenges in finding information on the Web Which of these websites would be reliable for download a movie?

The World Wide Web offers information and data from all over the world. So much information is available and that information can appear to be fairly “anonymous”, it is necessary to develop skills to evaluate what you find. Anyone can write a Web page, documents of the widest range of quality, written by authors of the widest range of authority THERE ARE NO FILTERS The question arises, how to identify reliable information?!

Strategies for finding information on the web Several strategies Authority Currency Coverage Objectivity Accuracy

1.)Authority Who is responsible for the page? (person/organization) What are their qualifications and associations? On the footer you can see name of web page author or organization

What type of domain does it come from ? The URL can give clues to the authority of a source (A tilde ~ in the URL usually indicates that it is a personal page rather than part of an institutional Web site) What type of domain does it come from ? .edu educational (anything from serious research to zany student pages) .gov governmental (usually dependable) .com commercial (may be trying to sell a product) .net network (may provide services to commercial or individual customers) .org  organization (non-profit institutions; may be biased)

www.designfreebies.org

2.)Currency Are dates clear when the website was first created and edited? Is it clear when the page was last updated? 3.)Coverage What is the focus of the site? Are there clear headings to illustrate an outline of the content? Is the navigation within the website clear?

Example: Wikipedia clear heading

This page was last modified on 18 December 2010 at 14:25

4.)Objectivity Are biasis learly stated? Are affiliations clear? To determine the type of web site and potential audience (political, ideological, cultural, religious, or institutional biases) Check the header/footer and URL/domain (.gov .com .edu) to determine organizational source of website and how this reflects on content type

5.)Accuracy The goal of the accuracy test is to assure that the information is actually correct: up to date, factual, detailed, exact, and comprehensive. If the information is opinion is this clearly stated? If there is information copied from other sources is this acknowledged? Are there footnotes if necessary? Accuracy of spelling and grammar

How does each of the websites deal with the subject? Here are two pages to compare: http://www.studygs.net/evaluate.htm http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

First page has classification listed to specific topic (less helpful), while the other page has slightly more answers to specific questions and gives some recommendations and steps to evaluate web sites (more helpful)

Conclusion Lots of information is available on the Internet, but you can't believe everything you see. Anyone can publish (in)correct information on the Internet. Because of that (unreliable source) you need some strategy in finding reliable information on the Internet. Some of the strategies are: Authority, Currency, Coverage, Objectivity, Accuracy…

Sources http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cfocus/cfhealthinfo02/focus.htm http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html http://www.studygs.net/evaluate.htm http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/ http://webliminal.com/search/search-web12.html

Thank you for your attention!