1. Anne Manuel Anne.manuel@some.ox.ac.uk

2.  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

3.  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

4.  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

5. 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

6.  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, can potentially reach invisible web  Cons – labour intensive, expensive, relatively small pool of resources.

7.  www.intute.ac.uk www.intute.ac.uk  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

8.  http://infomine.ucr.edu/ http://infomine.ucr.edu/  Similar setup to Intute but US based  Compiled by librarians, specialists etc  Fairly small database

9.  Dmoz Open Directory Project www.dmoz.org  Ipl2 http://www.ipl.org/  Edited by selected volunteers and self-policed but abides by policies and procedures for inclusion of sites  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

10.  Visible web – that which 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 link in 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

11.  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

12.  OAIster  Solo (though only searching Oxford University resources)

13.  Virtual Training Suite  www.vts.intute.ac.uk www.vts.intute.ac.uk  60 subject specific guides E.g. ‘Internet For American Studies’  Key sites, what to look for and how to use what you find  Libguides (Oxford University)  http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

14. Many sites that will teach you about this : e.g. Internet Detective www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detectivewww.vts.intute.ac.uk/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?

15.  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

16.  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

17.  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?

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

19.  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

20.  Before searching the Internet consider  Purpose – why use the Internet? Would Solo be better? Or a bibliogrpahic 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