1. English 1213 Professor Stoffers Session 2 Internet and Evaluation Frederic Murray, M.L.I.S.

2. The Internet is… a major presence in our daily lives constantly growing helping make an enormous amount of information available

3. Web Searching is easy because….. Speed Choice Availability 24/7 Always get an answer

4. Web searching is difficult because… Organization Quality control Reliability

5. Web vs. Library Databases Web  Good for current events  Statistical Information  Pop Culture  Opinion  Information about Organizations & Groups Library Databases  Research Based Books & Articles  Full-text Resources  Authoritative & Peer- reviewed Materials  Information about People & Cultures  Easier to Search AND, OR, NOT Specific Subjects

6. Forming New Habits Ever wonder what you might be missing?

7. Forming New Habits

8. Humanities American History $29 / yr Journal of Teacher Education $30 / yr College English $75 / yr Nursing & Allied Health Applied Nursing Research $224 / yr Nursing Science Quarterly $280 / yr Journal of Community Health Nursing $475 / yr Sciences Journal of the Optical Society of America $1,760 / yr Journal of the American Chemical Society $3,589 / yr Journal of Physics $7,115 / yr

9. Evaluation

10. Remember to Evaluate!!! Authority  Who created it? Who is responsible?  What credentials do they hold? What makes them qualified to discuss the topic? Accuracy  Can the information be verified?  Check the facts! Objectivity  How is the information being presented?  Is it objective or biased? What’s the point of view? Currency (important based on subject)  When was it published?  When was it last updated?

11. Step 1: Authority Web Pages  Credentials/Qualifications/Reputation  Who is responsible for content? Webmaster? Web team? Organization? Institution? Company?

12. Domain Names Which one is right?  www.whitehouse.com www.whitehouse.com  www.whitehouse.gov www.whitehouse.gov  www.whitehouse.net www.whitehouse.net  www.whitehouse.org www.whitehouse.org Whois.net  www.whois.net www.whois.net.gov.org.mil.com.edu.net.int

13. Domain Names  Domain Names: ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has overall responsibility for managing the Domain Name System.ICANN

14. Step 2: AccuracyAccuracy Web Pages  Can the information be verified? Links to credible sites Copyright Works Cited Fact check with a printed source

15. Step 3: Objectivity Web Pages  Biased or Objective? Opinion/Fan sites Sponsoring Organization Agendas Political Propaganda Web hosting http://english.aljazeera.net/News http://www.foxnews.com/ http://www.npr.org/

16. Step 4: CurrencyCurrency Web Pages  When was it created and last updated? Well maintained web sites have an indication when it was last updated or modified Accessibility  Dead links Stability  Changes URLs frequently

17. Class Activity Evaluate It  Each group will be assigned a website  Each group will judge their website and determine if it is “good” or “bad”  Once that is determined, the group must give justification for their answer by providing evidence using all four evaluation criteria.  A spokesperson from each group will report on the group’s findings

18. Exercise: Evaluation Handout www.who.int/en/ www.dhmo.org www.genochoice.com www.martinlutherking.org www.defendamerica.mil www.oshp.net

19. Google Larry Page & Sergey Brin/ Grad Students 1998 Mission: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.“ 2007: 23 Billion dollar corporation

20. Google Many websites can be misleading due to bias, self-publication or because they’re trying to sell you something Very little free access to commercially published materials — especially articles from expensive scholarly journals Because of copyright, many of these articles simply aren’t available in Google

21. Google: A Tool like any other Site Specific Command What it does: searches only specific websites What to type: Blackwater Security site:com What you’ll get: references to Blackwater Security on dot com websites

22. Google Scholar Google Scholar provides a simple way to search for scholarly literature. Search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

23. Google Scholar Works best for citations Restrictions to Content  Fee-based  Often your Library already owns material  We’re working on improving access

24. Wikipedia Wiki: A Web application that allows users to add content to a collaborative hypertext Web resource (coauthoring), as in an Internet forum, and permits others to edit that content (open editing).

25. Wikipedia Jimmy Wales January 15, 2001 No Original Research NPOV (Neutral point of view) No owners, multiple anonymous authors Anyone with Internet access can create or edit an entry…Anyone

26. Wikipedia Contributors: male, English speaking, denizens of the Internet. Problem is not that it disregards the facts, but that it elevates them above all else. Most of the content is discussion/history of edits & not the entries themselves. Rosenzweig, Roy. “Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past.” The Journal of American History 93.1 (2006): 117-146.

27. Wikipedia Participation maps popular, not academic concerns It is a working community…but is it a good historical resource? Lack of Critical Analysis Problematic as a sole source of information Like all encyclopedias…ok to start, terrible place to stop. Benefits are to its active participants, not its readers.

28. The Machine is Us/ing Us

29. Writing Your Paper Writing Center  Located in the basement of the library  Call for appointment #774-7083 MLA Style  Style Sheets  MLA Handbook at Reference & Circulation Desk  http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/ http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/

30. Questions? Contact me: Frederic Murray, M.L.I.S. 744-7113 frederic.murray@swosu.edu http://faculty.swosu.edu/frederic.murray/

31. Thank You