Anne Manuel

 Introduction – What do we mean by ‘quality’ ?  What’s wrong with using Google?  Havens of academic quality on the Internet  Searching for quality in the visible and invisible web  How to recognise a quality resource  Hands-On

 A resource fit for purpose –in academic settings that might mean peer-reviewed, but might just mean credible – e.g. information found on the British Library website  In some circumstances could be informal sites, news sites or sites expressing an opinion  Still some criteria which can be universally adopted to evaluate whether sites are worth using

 Google Searches are often just what is needed  E.g. British Library website  Not always helpful for academic research  Too many hits, too unfocussed, sorting is by ‘popularity’ some types of site e.g. news sites are favoured  Also, websites are not evaluated, results compiled by robots, what is being searched?  Web is big! Important to use a portfolio of methods as nothing is or can be comprehensive

An example : You want to compare the ways that governments of different countries address the issue of ‘music piracy’ i.e. illegal uploading and downloading of music on the Internet  Music Piracy  Google Google  Gateway  Specialist search engines

 Ring-fenced field of web resources that are selected and catalogued by subject and also often by resource-type – often using controlled vocabulary. Makes browsing particularly useful.  Pros – Hand-picked by experts, transparent selection procedure, browsability, searching using thesaurus  Cons – labour intensive, expensive, relatively small pool of resources.

  Intute is a free online service created by a consortia of 7 universities in the UK  Subject specialists (academics and librarians) review and evaluate thousands of resources and add them to the Intute database, annotated, classified and indexed

 Subject based  Browsable and searchable  Hand selected and reviewed by UK academics and library subject specialists.  Customisable (alerts, saved searches, etc)  Maintained for another year – after that?

 Dmoz Open Directory Project   Edited by selected volunteers and self-policed but abides by policies and procedures.  Some useful sites, well organised but not necessarily of academic quality – though should conform to evaluation criteria – i.e. current, reliable source, verifiable information etc

 Visible web – what can be reached by ‘spider’ robots crawling and indexing websites. E.g. Conventional search engines including Google Scholar  Google scholar Pros ▪ Useful, focussing on academic websites ▪ May often pick up book chapters which can be hard to find ▪ Has been researched and shown to find a high proportion of the items that bibliographic databases find ▪ Can download to reference manager software ▪ Can often link in to full text though Find it in Oxford  Google Scholar Cons ▪ Can be inaccurate (picks up items from bibliographies) ▪ Often randomness about results ▪ Won’t go into all institutions/databases/repositories ▪ Older items often listed first as more often linked to

 Invisible web – items that are not found by conventional search engines because:  Within sites that have been blocked by owners  Spiders cannot penetrate them  Created dynamically by the searcher  Are not linked to by other sites so not found by spider  Examples – institutional repositories, databases, many commercial sites

 OAIster  Infomine  Solo (though only searching Oxford University resources)

 Virtual Training Suite   60 subject specific guides E.g. ‘Internet For American Studies’  Key sites, what to look for and how to use what you find

 Oxford Bibliographies online “OBO is a library of disciplined-based subject modules. In each subject module, leading scholars have produced a literary guide to the most important and significant sources in an area of study they know best. The guides feature a selective list of bibliographic citations supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult. Each topic has a unique editorial commentary to show how the cited sources are interrelated. The citations promote discoverability as they link out to the sources via your library collection or through Google books and more.” OUP 2010

Many sites that will teach you about this : e.g. Internet Detective Dmoz – website evaluation Key considerations:  Authority – who has written it? What are their credentials? What institution are they affiliated to (if any)? Is it peer reviewed? Who else thinks this is good?  Currency – when was this written? When updated? Are the links live?  Reliability/Verifiability – Are there references to other credible sites/publications? Are statements backed up? Who is allowed to edit/add to the site?  Standpoint – what’s the purpose of the site? Why has the author written it? Are there obviously unbalanced arguments?  Fit for purpose – Is the information of an appropriate breadth and depth for your purposes? Who is the intended audience? Does the information add to information obtained from other sources?

 Things to look out for:  Authority  URL –.edu.ac.gov address?  ‘About ‘ section  Other publications/references by the author  Institution home page  Link: feature in Google to find out who links to it

 Currency – things to look for  Updated date (often small print at the bottom)  Test a few links  Dates of any references  References to current events

 Reliability/verifiability - things to look for  Sponsoring site (check URL stem)?  Adverts?  Links to the page  Typos/ mistakes/inaccuracies/popular myths  Contact details – where? Who?

 Standpoint – things to check  Google author  Google URL  Read content!

 Fit for Purpose – things to look for  Original content?  Statement of intention/intended audience  Title/author/ date – minimum needed for citation  Site map – to give an overview

 Before searching the Internet consider  Purpose – why use the Internet? Would Solo be better? Or a bibliographic database?  Strategy – think through what sort of information you want and where you might expect to find it. Make sure you are clear and focussed about your research area – time wasting is very easy on the Internet  To0ls – Use a range of Internet tools (gateways and specialist search engines) and consider them as starting points to find journals/authors/research centres that you can then browse more systematically