Web Site Evaluation for Research

 

Title of Web Site ___________________________________________________________

URL ____________________________________________________________________

Date visited_______________________________________________________________

Search tool used to find site___________________________________________________

 

I.  First Impressions

 

#1:

#2:

Yes

So-so

No

Yes

So-so

No

Page loading  (quick?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertisements  (not distracting?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author &/or Organization  (labeled?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images & captions  (useful?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grammar & spelling  (correct?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Links  (working?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Navigation  (easy?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Date of last page update  (recent?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II.  Looking Deeper

#1:

#2:

Yes

So-so

No

Yes

So-so

No

Content

 

 

Information quality (current? accurate? complete?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vocabulary (appropriate for audience?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images (unedited?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sound recordings, movies (complete?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography & webliography authoritative?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Help (FAQ, help pages?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Links from other pages (plentiful, reliable?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cost (free?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Authorship

 

 

Author/ organization (authority on topic?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sponsor’s domain (well-known, reputable?)..

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bias

 

 

Tone of site (objective?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Point-of-view (objective?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusions

1. Who is the audience for site (children, adults, students, consumers, etc._______________

2. What is the purpose of site (inform, persuade, advertise, satirize, spoof, misinform, etc.?)_                  

3. Would you recommend this site to others?______________________________________

4. Why or why not?__________________________________________________________

5. Would you use this site for your projects?_______________________________________

6. Why or why not?__________________________________________________________

 

Web Site Verification Tools:

 

To check the number of pages that link to the selected site:

  1. Go to a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Altavista. 
  2. In the search box, type link:http://webpageURL.  The search results page will display pages that link to the selected site. 
    Ex.  link:http://www.loc.gov.  In AltaVista (www.altavista.com), a link search on http://www.loc.gov/ yields 556,000 pages
    that link to www.loc.gov, the Library of Congress home page.

NOTE – Search engines respond differently to this exercise.  Try several search engines with the same URL to observe this at work. 
Different results will also occur if the “http://” is deleted, links are written but not linked, or if the site is linked by its ‘alias’ URL.

 

To learn the sponsor of the domain name of the selected site:

  1. Go to http://www.internic.net/whois.html or http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
  2. Enter the domain name and extension.  [Find the domain name by looking at the first part of the web address. 
    Omit the “www” if present.  The domain name will be the remaining portion of the first part of the web address. 
    Ex. For http://www.virginia.edu or the longer URL, http://www.virginia.edu/uvatours/shorthistory/ , the domain name is virginia.edu.]

 

Web Site Evaluation Resources

 

Evaluating Information Found on the Internet, The Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University - http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/index.html

 

Hoax?  Scholarly Research? Personal Opinion?  You Decide!, UCLA College Library - http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/hoax/index.htm

 

Piper, Paul S.  “Better Read That Again:  Web Hoaxes and Misinformation”,.  Searcher.  Vol. 8, No. 8, Sept. 2000 - http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep00/piper.htm

 

Schrock, Kathy.  “The ABCs of Web Site Evaluation”.  Classroom Connect, Dec. 1998/ Jan. 1999.  - http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/pdf/weval.pdf

 

Thinking Critically About World Wide Web Resources, UCLA College Library - http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/critical/index.htm

 

Using the Internet, Getting Started, The Learning Page, Library of Congress - http://memory.loc.gov/learn/start/inres/gen/using.html

 

(All sites accessed 3/2006.)

 

 

Portal Sites for Research

Virtual Reference Shelf, Library of Congress - http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html

Librarians’ Internet Index:  Websites You Can Trust - http://lii.org/

WWW Virtual Library - http://vlib.org/