1. Content:
   
   
1. What is this site about?
   
   
2. Who is it made for? Is the ‘stated intent’ of this website clear? Does the subject matter match the stated intent?
   
   
3. How comprehensive is the site? Is the information that is presented thorough?
   
   
4. Is the language elementary, advanced, very technical or specific to a discipline (for example, medical or legal terminology)?
   
   
5. What is the range of the information covered? Is it facts or opinion, does it offer a balanced or a particular view of the subject?
   
   
6. Is the information well-researched and verifiable? Are there references or links to other information sites that add to the information? Are any assumptions made reasonable?
   
   
7. Is there anything significant that has been left out?
   
   
8. How does the site compare to similar sites? Does it repeat the same information or offer a new perspective?
   
   
9. Is there unique information or does the site mainly provide links to other sites?
   
   
10. Is there advertising on the site, and does it impact in any way on the information that is presented? Is the site basically a marketing tool with no real informational value?
    
    
11. What kind of information is provided in the site links and are they relevant and appropriate to the original site? Is there some information on the content of the links or is it necessary to go to the new location to find out what kind of information it contains?
    
    
2. Authority:
   
   
1. Who developed this site? Who is the author or producer? Is there information, such as a biography, credentials, an About the author link on the home page, or an email address?
   
   
2. Who produced this particular document or page of information? This may not be the same person who developed the overall site, and the reliability of the information may change, for better or for worse.
   
   
3. Does an individual or an organization present the site? If set up by an individual, what is the reason? Does the individual have a stated interest and/or qualifications in the subject area? Can this be verified?
   
   
4. If an organization or institution produces the site, is the vision statement or mission statement provided? What are the basic values and goals of the organization or institution? Is there a way of verifying if they are a valid organization?
   
   
5. Is the author/producer associated with other reputable institutions or organizations?
   
   
6. Is contact information, such as the address, telephone number and email address available? If not, why not? Is the contact information there to encourage feedback and questions? If you are required to give personal information before you can get more information from the site, proceed cautiously. This could be a marketing ploy and result in your receiving unwanted and unasked for advertising. It could also lead to security issues – for reasons of personal safety, always be extremely careful when asked for personal information.
   
   
3. Accuracy and Timeliness:
   
   
1. Is it clear if the site has been updated recently? A lot of Internet content is on developing issues and current information may be important.
   
   
2. Are the links up to date?
   
   
3. Is the site well written, following the basic rules of grammar, spelling and composition? Errors in grammar and spelling can actually result in inaccurate information being presented, and indicate a lack of quality control.
   
   
4. Are sources of factual information clearly listed?
   
   
4. Accessibility:
   
   
1. Is it easy to connect to the site with standard software? Are there limitations, because of required software and/or hardware that is required to look at the site? Is there a statement about ‘Best used with’, and how much does that limit who can use the site?
   
   
2. Does the site download quickly or offer a text-only version if many graphics are used?
   
   
3. Is attention paid to the needs of people with disAbilities? Do images also have "alt tags" or is a text-only version available? There are devices that can read text out loud for people who are visually impaired; attention to the requirements of text-readers is essential.
   
   
4. Are passwords or fees required to look at the information?
   
   
5. Size of the site – is information easily found or buried deeply within the site?
   
   
6. Is the site easy to navigate– are graphics clear, pages laid out logically and do icons clearly represent the information contained within the page?
   
   
7. Is there a site map, a way to search the site, or clear commands to move around the site (commands to move back, forward, home, next page, etc.)?
   
   

 

Research:

Using the Internet as a source for research material requires careful evaluation of theresources found. Be especially aware of the first three areas noted: content, authorityand accuracy. Look at more than one source of information to obtain a variety ofviewpoints. Opinions may be presented as facts; be aware of the difference. If you areusing the Internet to collect research for a school project, make sure you know what typeof resources you can use; are newspaper articles, magazine articles or popular websitesallowed? Be sure of where the information comes from. If an article quotes facts andfigures, but doesn’t tell you where the facts and figures came from, proceedcarefully.

A note about URLs:

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are Internet addresses. Here’s how they areconstructed:

Transfer protocol://servername.domain/
directory/subdirectory/filename.filetype

All URLs must have the first two elements: transfer protocol and servername.domain (forexample: http://www.metrac.org)




• The transfer protocol most often seen is ‘http’ (hypertext), the standard format on the World Wide Web; other protocols less commonly seen include ‘ftp’, and ‘gopher’.
  
  
• The 'servername.domain' is the computer where the website resides. Not all server names begin with ‘www’. The domain name can contain valuable information on where the information is coming from – in Canada and the US, three letter domain types are commonly used. Examples include: government body (gov), educational institutions (edu), not-for-profit organizations (org), commercial enterprize (com), and military body (mil). Two letter country codes (e.g. ‘ca’ for Canada, ‘uk’ for United Kingdom) are used, but not consistently, and rarely in the U.S. In the United Kingdom, there are two domain types preceding the country code: academic organizations (ac) and commercial organizations (co). Check the sites listed in Additional Resources and see what information is contained in the URLs.
  
  
• One way of trying to find out more about the site under evaluation is to backtrack on the URL to the servername.domain address, and see if it is a homepage.
  
  
• A site located on a University server does not guarantee its content or validity. Many universities give their students and faculty space on their server to design a personal Web page.
  
  
• Often (but not always!) a tilde (~) in an address will be a marker for a personal page.

 

Additional Resources:

There are a number of websites on evaluating Internet resources. Below are several comprehensive sites that include information on evaluation, and links to additional sites.

1. http://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/criticalevaluation/index.cfm

This is a comprehensive and concise site at the University of Alberta library, which includes a list of evaluation criteria and links to other evaluation sites.

2. http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/critical/index.htm

This site, located at the UCLA library, is a single page checklist of questions that should be asked about any online information being looked at for research purposes.

3. http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm

This site is part of the World Wide Web Information Quality Library and contains links to criteria for evaluating information resources, particularly those on the Internet.

4. http://sosig.ac.uk/desire/internet-detective.html

The Internet Detective is an interactive tutorial on website evaluation, based in the United Kingdom. The tutorial is free to use but registration is required allows the completion of the tutorial in more than one sitting – the system will return to the last section completed.

 

Glossary of Internet Terms:

Address: The location of an Internet resource. An email address may take the form ofjoeschmoe@somecompany.com. A web address looks something like http://www.metrac.org.

Bookmark: A way to ‘save’ a website address on your browser so you canreturn to it easily. You can then return to it that page at a later time with a simpleclick of the mouse on the URL address saved in your bookmarks list. Bookmarks may alsobe called Favourite Places or Hot Spots.

Broken link: A hyperlink which no longer works when "clicked on" or whichdoes not take you to the destination it was supposed to. This can occur for severalreasons: the server hosting the website is temporarily unavailable (for upgrading ortechnical problems), the website has moved or the HTML code for the hyperlink isincorrect.

Browser: A program run on a computer for viewing World Wide Web pages. Two well knownbrowsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Chat room: A site on the World Wide Web where any number of computer users can type inmessages to each other (chat) in real time, creating an online conversation. Most chatrooms have a particular topic (which you are expected to discuss) but there are some thatare purely for meeting other people.

Discussion Group: A group of people who exchange messages about a specific subject ofinterest. Readers post messages, or articles and also reply to articles that they read.Discussion groups are also known as a newsgroup. Internet users can subscribe to many different newsgroups.

Directory: A website offering listings of other websites in categories (Yahoo! Is adirectory, not a search engine). In theory, the sites listed at a Web directory have beenreviewed and evaluated for content and relevancy before being posted to the directory.

Domain: People sometimes refer to them loosely as "sites." The Internet isdivided into smaller sets known as domains, including .com (business), .gov (government),.edu (educational), org (non-profit organization) and others. Also there are many 2 lettercountry code designations (.UK for United Kingdom, .CA for Canada, etc.)

Dot: The period character. Internet lingo is to say dot; for example, the electronicmail address at METRAC is metrac@interlog.com, which is pronounced as "metrac atinterlog dot com".

Emoticon: A combination of simple keystrokes found on any keyboard to express emotions,thoughts and actions. Also called smilies, they are commonly found in email, usenet,newsgroups, chat rooms, and mailing lists. For example ;-) is a wink, :-) is a happysmiley, and :-( is a sad smiley (just look at them sideways!).

FAQ: Short form for Frequently Asked Questions. This is a collection of common questions andanswers on a particular topic or website.

Home Page: The introductory or main page of a website. Also, this isthe website that automatically loads each time you launch your browser.

HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol): The way a server and your computer talk to eachother. Web addresses usually begin with 'http://'

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): The primary formatting language used to create Webpages. It defines the page layout, fonts, graphics and hyperlinks to other pages. Ifyou use the ‘view page source’ feature on your browser menu to look at thesource of a Web page, what you are looking at is HTML

Hyperlink: see ‘Link’

Internet/internet: An internet (small ‘I’) is a term meaning a group ofconnected computers. The Internet (capital ‘I’) means the World Wide computernetwork using TCP/IP protocols and all resources connected to it. The "Net"contains but is not limited to World Wide Web, gopher and ftp sites.

Link (also called a hyperlink, or hotlink): Highlighted words in a text (maybe underlined and in a contrasting color) or an image on a web page that you can click onto go to another section or page at the same site, or to a different website. The colormay change after you click on the link so you can tell if you've already followed it. Themouse pointer changes shape when it passes over a link.

Listserv: An electronic mailing list typically used by a broad range of discussiongroups. Usually, you have to send an email to a Listserver to subscribe, then you willreceive periodic email messages about the topic you have requested.

Modem: This is short for MOdulator, DEModulator, a device that allows your computer tocommunicate with another computer over a phone line. Modems come in different speeds: thehigher the speed, the faster the data is transmitted.

Multimedia: A combination of media types on a single electronic document,includingtext, graphics, animation, and audio and video clips.

Newsgroup: see ‘discussion groups’.

Online: When you connect to the Internet, you are online.

PDF (Portable Document Format): A file format that reproduces documents in an electronicform so that they can be sent, viewed, and printed exactly as they originally appeared,regardless of the computer they were created on. The Adobe Acrobat reader plug-in programcan be used to open PDF files. You can tell a file is a PDF file by the extension (.pdf)on the end of a filename.

Plug-in: The idea behind plug-in’s is that a small piece of software is loadedinto memory by the larger program, adding a new feature, and that users need only installthe few plug-ins that they need. Browser plug-ins allow the browsers to display specialkinds of documents and multimedia effects.

Post: To send a message to a mailing list or newsgroup.

Protocol: The set of standardized rules that define how computers communicate with eachother. For example, the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specifies the rules forcommunication between World Wide Web servers and browsers. 

Refresh/Reload Button: A button on the toolbar which tells yourbrowser to re-open the web page you are currently on.

Search Engine: A program that uses advanced searching software to locate other Websites and Internet files based on information entered by the user. Alta Vista, Excite,InfoSeek, HotBot, and Lycos are some of the most popular search engines. Search enginesrely on automated programs, known as spiders or robots, to make huge files with entries ofliterally millions of Websites. No human evaluation is conducted to determine therelevancy of sites. When you want to find information on a topic, you enter the words inthe search box of the engine you think best describe the topic, and the search engines dotheir best to make a list of all the entries that might be what you're looking for.

Site: A single or collection of related Web pages.

Snail Mail: Slang for regular, paper mail sent through the postal services.

Stop Button: A button on the toolbar that allows you to stop a download process. If awebsite is taking a very long time to download, you can click on the ‘stop’button on the toolbar and then click on the ‘reload’ button to see if you canconnect more quickly.

Surf: To spend time, often hours on end, travelling through the Internet. Often called"browsing."

TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol - this protocol is thefoundation of the Internet, an agreed upon set of rules directing computers on how toexchange information with each other. Other Internet protocols, such as FTP, Gopher andHTTP sit on top of TCP/IP.

Toolbar: A row of buttons at the top of your browser's window which you can use torevisit pages, load images, open locations, print pages, find text, or stop transfers inprogress.

Upload/Download: The process of transferring files between computers. Files areuploaded from your computer to another and downloaded from another computer to your own.

URL (short for Uniform Resource Locator): The method by which Internet sites areaddressed. An example would be "http://www.metrac.org", the address ofMETRAC’s home page.

Webmaster: The formal name for the person in charge of maintaining a website (may alsobe called Web administrator, Site Administrator, or Content Editor). Personal homepagesmay have site authors, site designers, or page builders.

World Wide Web (WWW or W3): The Web is a collection of online documents housed onInternet servers around the world. To access these documents, you use a browser.