B. Evaluating Web Information

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 114-116

Page 114

There are standard criteria by which free websites should be evaluated.²

These criteria include a number of things that evaluate the quality and reliability of the information to be found on the site:

· Authorship: Who authored the material? Is it clear who owns the web-site? Is the site affiliated with a reliable or known publisher or organization? Does the site provide a mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address? It is always important to consider authorship when using freely available websites - anyone can publish a website with relative ease with no objective editorial policies or control.

· Accuracy and quality: Is the site free of spelling and grammatical errors? Does the site contain broken links? Well-maintained websites tend to mean that the owner of the site is taking the time to keep the information current and accurate.

Page 115

· Purpose: Why does the website exist? Is it trying to sell a product or advocate a particular viewpoint? Print publications, like websites, can contain biased points of view. The one difference between print publications and websites, however, may be the ease with which one can access web pages and the speed by which one may scan the information without appreciating that the information may contain subtle biases.

· Scope: What is the scope or date range of the material on the website? How often is the site updated? Good websites will show when the page was last updated. This information is often on the bottom of the page (hold down the "Ctrl" key on your keyboard and then press the "End" or the "PGDN" key to get quickly to the bottom of the website page to check this information).

When evaluating websites, it helps to consider the different categories of websites that exist, including personal websites, business/ marketing websites, advocacy websites, and university or government websites. Each of these different types of websites has a different reason for existing with differing goals and motivations that can affect the quality of information to be found on them. One major difference between free Internet sites and commercial online databases is often the amount of editorial and quality control (in addition to value-added features). In addition, one drawback of free Internet resources is the potential lack of permanency of information - linkrot is a serious issue that tends to be less of an issue with fee-based online resources.³

However, it is sometimes possible to find older...