1. How do you know if a website is good enough to cite?
Get out a sheet of paper
Title it Citing Websites
Jot down your thoughts in response to the question below:
**cite = use in research
How do you know if a website is good enough to cite?
Walk about and take note of students’ responses as a pre-assessment

2. Tutorial Watch the tutorial video and answer the following questions:
What is an authoritative site?
What clues indicate that a website is authoritative?
What clues indicate that a website is not authoritative?
Show video tutorial

3. Let’s make it easy to remember: The 5 W’s
Who
What
When
Where
Why
Have students watch robot tutorial and add details under each W

4. Who? credentials? education? experience? affiliation?
Does the author’s experience really qualify him or her as an expert?
Does he or she offer first-hand credibility? (For instance, a Vietnam veteran or a witness to Woodstock?)
Who actually published this page?
Is this a personal page or is it an endorsed part of a site belonging to a major institution? (Clues pointing to a personal page: ~ tilde, %, users, members)

5. But what if I can’t
find any
author information?

6. Look for credibility clues!
Words and phrases to look for:
About us
Who Am I
FAQs
Company Information
Our Staff
This info is usually found on the HOME page
Clues often appear on the top or bottom of a page, or in menu bars and frames. These sections often contain authorship clues! 6

7. No HOME page link? Truncate the URL
Delete characters in the address line up to the next slash mark to see if a main page offers more information about who is responsible for publishing the page you are interested in.
Go from:

8. More credibility clues (What do others think?)
Do a link check
In Google or AltaVista type
link:siteaddress
Your results will show which other sites have chosen to link to this page. If several respectable institutions have linked to a site, that provides a clue about the site’s credibility.
Do a link check here for a reliable site. Have your students examine and evaluate the URLs of the sites that linked to the site in question. 8

9. Still more credibility clues
If you have an author’s name but no further
information about credentials,
Search the name in quotation marks in a search engine or online database
On the Web, include words like profile, resume, or C.V. (curriculum vitae—an academic resume) to narrow your name search
the author (If you have no information other than an link, write a polite asking for more information.)

10. What?
Can facts, statistics, or other information be verified through other sources?
Based on your knowledge, does the information seem accurate? Is the information inconsistent with information you learned from other sources?
Is the information second hand? Has it been altered?
Do there appear to be errors on the page (spelling, grammar, facts)?

11. When? When was this information created? When was it last revised?
Are these dates meaningful in terms of your information needs?
Has the author of the page stopped maintaining it?
(Be suspicious of undated material.)

12. Where? Did the author bother to document his or her sources?
Were those references reliable and scholarly?
Are those sources real? Have you or your librarian heard of or been able to verify them?

13. URLs as clues to content
.com=commercial sites (vary in their credibility)
.gov=U.S. government site
.org=organization, often non-profit. *Some have strong bias and agendas
.edu=school or university site
*is it K–12? by a student or a teacher?
.ac=educational institution (like .edu)
.mil=U.S. military site
~=personal site

14. What do their URLs reveal about these sites?
These are not working URLS! Use them as examples for analysis only. 14

15. Recognizing bias is important.
Why?
Does the source present a particular view or bias?
Is the page selling a product?
Was the information found in a paid placement or sponsored result from the search engine?
Information is seldom neutral.
Recognizing bias is important.

16. Practice Part 1
1. Go to the following web address and complete the online tutorial. Can you sort the junk from the treasure?
*Do not complete Course Credit Acknowledgment Page
Write down how many you got right.
Tell me 1 thing you learned by doing this

17. Practice Part 2 2. Practice your skills with the following quiz:
What was your score?
Tell me 1 thing you learned by doing this.

18. Practice Part 3 3. http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/medina.asp
Directions: For each of the following sites, access the site and answer these questions.
Who wrote it? (name & credentials)
What is this?
Where did the author get his/her info?
When was it created & updated?
Why did the author write it? Is it biased?
Suitable to cite? EXPLAIN! 3. 4. 5.