Try to find out who wrote or created the Web pages
-- not just their names, but something that indicates what about them
indicates they are a "good source." It is easy to think that an author wouldn’t be writing unless
he or she was some kind of expert on the topic, but that is not always
true.
Consider this report on the Bay
of Pigs by Jared Wiener. A google search reveals it has been linked
by more than a hundred Web sites. But who is Jared Weiner? The site doesn't say,
but I have some inside information. He is a recent graduate of Ithaca College who was a talented double major
and served as news director for an award-winning news program at ICTV. However,
he wrote the report not after graduation nor while in college. He wrote the report when he was in the eighth grade. Although it does not qualify him to be a
renowned Kennedy-era scholar, he told me that he did get an A- on
the report.
Sometimes pages will generously provide an about
the author link, but usually you will have to dig around.
You can try googling
an author, but you can also check the URL itself for important clues.
Truncating the URL by deleting the all the characters
after each slash (/) until you get to the first one
is a good way to find out what person, organization, or institution
is responsible for the site. The URL http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think3.html
reveals that this page is connected to the Library at Ithaca College.
The distinctions among the codes have blurred, and even more letters
have been added, but check the top level domain of the site's URL.
That's the .com, .org, .gov, .edu, and two
letter geographic codes, among others. A tilde (~)
is becoming rare in a URL, but it used to be a strong indication of
a personal homepage. Now most personal web pages will have a .com
address. Whether a .com is a personal web page or a commercial
site, it warrants a different kind of scrutiny than a .gov page,
one sanctioned by the US government. The quality and nature of .edu
sites range from research
forums to joke
collections, so just knowing the organization responsible for a
web site is not enough.
Questions to think about:
- Who is responsible for the site? Do the authors have any authority
or expertise? Do they provide you a means to contact them? Is this a
commercial, governmental, personal, or academic Web site?
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