Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Evaluating Web Sites for Research: Part 2

Two weeks ago, I began a series on how to evaluate web sites for research purposes. This week I will discuss more criteria you can use to determine if a web site can be cited for your term papers and projects.

One way you can determine the reliability of a web site's information is by its currency. The currency of a web site refers to how often it is updated with new information. Just because the Internet is growing by leaps and bounds, it does not mean that there are no outdated web sites. You can sometimes determine if a site's information is current by checking it against other sources, such as other web sites, books, magazine articles, and so on.

Some professions, such as computer science or astronomy, are constantly changing, so you need to make sure that what you download is up to date. For example, if you download a web site that lists Pluto as a planet, you will need to find another source of information, because astronomers no longer consider it to be a planet. Even the field of literature changes. If you are doing research on the life of the writer Norman Mailer, you should check several sources to see if he is still living (he recently died).

Many web sites also indicate when they were last updated on the site itself; others will indicate the publication date of the articles or information on the site.

Another way to determine if a site is outdated is by clicking on the links to see if they still work. A very outdated web site will have links that lead nowhere; you will end up seeing an error message or a note that the information has been moved.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Evaluating Web Sites for Research: Part 1

When you are doing Internet research for a term paper or essay, you need to keep in mind that not everything you download is going to be reliable, objective, or even factual. If you come across a web site that you are tempted to cite for a term paper, you must first critically evaluate the site to determine if it is appropriate as a source of information.

One thing you must determine is who published the site and for what intentions was the information posted on the site. Keep in mind that almost anyone these days can post information on the Internet with the right computer programs, and some web hosting sites such as geocities allow people to create their own web sites very easily, without any programming experience required.

So when you download a web site, you can easily tell what type of site it is by looking at its URL, which is also known as its web address. Web sites of educational institutions end with .edu, whereas government sites have the .gov extension and nonprofit organizations have .org in their URL. Be careful when downloading information from someone's personal web page. Personal web pages are not always reliable for research; they often just contain the author's subjective opinions, so you need to regard them with a grain of salt. You can usually tell that a site is a personal web page by looking at the URL. Personal pages often have an individual's name in the URL, or the name of a web hosting service, such as geocities, tripod, or AOL.

Next week I will discuss more tips and techniques on evaluating web sites for research purposes.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

An Online Criminal Justice Directory

The FSU College of Criminology and Criminal Justice has a vast online directory of links to other web sites that cover nearly every aspect of the topic. If you need to find information on forensics, censorship, federal criminal justice agencies, or drug and alcohol information, this site is a good resource to check out.

http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/cjl-main.php