Searching, Evaluating & Citing Information

Web tutorials

• TILT - Interactive tutorial on how to explore and research in the online world .
• Internet Tutorials - A selection of tutorials from University at Albany Libraries.
• The Spider's Apprentice - A helpful guide to web search engines from Monash University.
• Finding Information on the Internet - A tutorial from the University of California at Berkeley.

Evaluating Information on the Web

Unlike published material, such as books and journal articles, which go through a process of editing and peer review, material on the Web is not subject to any standards or review process. Information on the Web can also be written by anyone - resulting in a wide range of quality of information as well as style and format. Because this is the case there are some important evaluation criteria to keep in mind when using Web resources:

	Authorship	Who is the author of the page or site? What are the credentials and/or qualifications of the author? Is there a statement of what the site sets out to achieve?
	URL affiliation	Look at the URL to determine what type of organization produced the site - .com - commercial site .edu - academic site .gov - government site .org - usually a non-profit organization .net - networked service provider
	Content	Who is the intended audience of the page - novice, expert, etc? Are references, citations, or links to other resources included? How has any data that is presented been gathered? Unpublished or published data?
	Bias	Information is often presented from a particular point of view or used to support an argument - is the author affiliated with any organization? Are there links to sites which represent only one side of an issue?
	Currency of information	When was the page last updated? How recent is the data presented on the page?

ICYouSee: T is for Thinking - A guide to critical thinking about what you see on the Web.

Citing Material on the Web

As with any other resource used in preparing an essay or assignment, information found on a Web page must be acknowledged.

To cite electronic resources include:

• The author's name, if it is given
• The title of the work, in quotation marks
• The title of the complete work (if applicable) in italics
• The date of document creation or last revision (if available)
• The URL
• The date you visited the page in parentheses.

  For example, a reference to a web page on the library server would look something like this:
  
  Brennan, Terry and Stone, Mary. Electronic Reference Desk. http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/eref.html (5 August 2002).

Additional information on citing electronic resources, including pamphlets to download and citation styles used at Melbourne University, are available from the Referencing Web page from the Language & Learning Skills Unit at the University of Melbourne. Other resources include:

• Harvard Referencing - Includes online and print referencing
• Online! Citation Styles - Includes MLA, APA, Chicago, CBE and other styles
• Columbia Guide to Online Style
• Style guides on the Internet

Internet terms and definitions

• Internet Terminology and Definitions
• Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
• Glossary of Internet Terms