This page last updated 04/03/2007
The internet is an excellent source of information, but you need to be careful when evaluating the quality of the information you find. You should always be thinking about the purpose of the site you are reading. A site that is designed to sell you something may not be providing objective information. In addition, you should bear in mind that anyone with internet access can post a web page, meaning that you should be very critical of web sites. You should try to find the credentials of the author to make sure that he/she is qualified to address the topic of the page. In particular you should be wary of any encyclopedia that you find online. Some of these (such as Wikipedia) are edited by anyone who wants to change them so the quality of their information is highly suspect. Once you find a resources, you can use these links to help you judge how likely that web page is to be accurate.
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The WWW virtual library - this site has a listing of many web sites that help you to interpret the quality of information available on the web. |
| TILT - this is a tutorial on web searching and evaluation from the Texas Information Literacy Tutorial. |
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Quality information checklist - another site designed to help you interpret health information (it looks like it's designed for younger folks, but it is still worthwhile). |
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The virtual chase - this website is to help legal researchers determine if information is of appropriate quality. |
| Internet for Biosciences - this site provides search tutorials and evaluation tools. |
Contents of this page copyright 2007 Department of Natural Sciences, Clayton State University.