Table 1: Smaller Lists and
Guides (fewer than 10,000 sites)Finding and Evaluating Quality Information through the Internet |
Dr Bob Swisher
Professor, Library and Information Studies
Directory, OU Instructional Technology Program
Tables of Internet-Based Guides and Directories Cited Below:
Table 1: Smaller Lists and
Guides (fewer than 10,000 sites)
Table 2: Larger Subject
Directories (10,000 or more)
Searching the Web for information is a lot more risky than most people who search the Internet realize. The problem is, when you don't know what is "out there," getting something back through a search engine is usually assumed to be tantamount to finding everything out there that was to be found. As this material will point out to you, that just isn't very likely.
Knowing how to search to find information on the Internet is only one of the steps involved in process of deciding that you have located the good material on your search topic, assessing the quality and veracity of what your search has found for you is another even more important issue. You see, unlike searching in a library's online catalog for books in that library's collection, searching the Internet means searching across a range of information sources (web pages) that have not been made available to you under any controlled circumstances--no one has used selection criteria to assess the worthiness or accuracy or validity of web pages sitting on http servers around the world. The World Wide Web is essentially an uncontrolled form of communication: there is lots of spurious junk and fluff on the Internet.
This fundamental nature of the Web (essentially, an uncontrolled medium of communication), coupled with the rather mindless searching that is facilitated by most of the search engines, leads to the difficulties that most of us have finding something we are looking for on the Web. We call up a search engine, put in a word or a phrase to be looked for, and we get thousands of "hits" returned to us--too many for us to rifle through seriously. We are overwhelmed with pages and pages of "hits," and end up just deciding to accept one of the few we actually took the time to look at.
We will develop a model here of the means of determining the quality of the information you find, understanding what the likely motives were of the individuals or agency or company responsible for serving up the information you found. Our point, though, is this: finding information on the Web usually captures more information than finally turns out to be of high enough quality for your purposes. Put another way: quality information is a definite subset of all information returned to you by the major search engines.
I. A Structure for Web Finding Tools |
A recent text on how to search the Internet (The Information Specialist's Guide to Searching and Researching on the Internet and the World Wide Web by Ernest Ackermann and Karen Hartman: Amazon listing) categorizes Web finding processes as falling into three main areas:
Virtual Library resources (subject guides, specialized databases, etc.) are followed by more comprehensive Web Directories, followed by the searching done through the search engines. However, we will modify the current three tier pyramid into four layers, with meta-search engines going in between Directories of the Web and Search Engine searching:
In fact, we will add another category to this structure of finding tools for web-based resources: Current Awareness Pages. we have in mind here resources like the Scout Report for the Social Sciences--resources that keep you up-to-date on a recurrent basis about what is becoming available on the web across specific subject areas. So, we propose to use the following structure to organize finding tools for web-based resources:
Here they are, with linked examples, in five
categories:
| 1. Smaller, Very Selective Lists and Guides to Web Resources (fewer than 10,000 sites) |
A very good overview of the size and level of subject-oriented lists of web services can be found at Subject Gateways, in the Guide to Network Resource Tools site of the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERNA):
Table 1: Smaller Lists and
Guides (fewer than 10,000 sites)
| 2. Larger Subject Directories of Web Resources (10,000 sites or more) |
This area includes the much more familiar, larger subject-based directories--many with over 100,000 sites listed. Remember, too: Yahoo!, although many consider it an example of a search engine, is mainly a directory-based locating device (with a search engine affixed to it).
Table 2: Larger Subject
Directories (10,000 or more)
| 3. Current Awareness Resources |
A free, monthly, non-subscription newsletter for academics, students, engineers, scientists & social scientists, published by the Heriot-Watt University Internet Resource Centre.
| 4. Meta-Search Engines |
Meta-search engines will allow you to search across different sets of search engines, all at the same time. A very good web site that deals with meta-search engines and how they work is this one, at CNET: Guide to Metasearchers. Currently, the page lists 11 meta-search engines. You should try them out, decide which you wish to use, and keep the link handly to get back to the "Guide to Metasearchers" page.
We have a number of these meta-search engines listed as
links on my WebHelp directory service. A
service you might also wish to try is this source, the Best Search Tools page, by the
InfoPeople Project (see below).
| 5. Search Engines |
If meta-search engines don't meet your expectations, or you have confidence in a particular search engine, by all means use that search engine, but please make sure you enter your Web searching with your eyes open. Heed the implications of the results of the recent Lawrence and Giles article (Access and Distrubtion of Information on the Internet); know what you are not getting through the engine you have chosen to use!
Choices of search engine? Well, we would refer you back to those who study the matter, like the 12 engines reviewed on the Search Engine Features Chart at Search Showdown, and the Search Engines Quick Guide from the InFoPeople Project (Internet For People), an Internet direct access project of public libraries throughout the state of California.
We will recommend that you try to get some experience with the basic and advanced search techniques found in the two most highly ranked engines and size of web page records, AltaVista and Northern Light. To that end, you should read the following two pages:
II. Evaluating Information on Web Sites |
Before you begin the process of searching for information on the Internet, you should have a good sense of what information you are going to be willing to accept as legitimate and/or appropriate for your purposes. In the professional area, Library and Information Studies, a good deal of attention is given to the process of selecting and acquiring resources for a library or some other form of information center. Not just everything in print or available via other media is appropriate for a collection of academic resources: librarians and information specialists have to know what is acceptable and what isn't . . . before they begin to acquire and hold materials in any collection. Similarly, you, the user of Internet-based information, should view all of the resources available to you through the Internet as the unselected, unintegrated, mass of background materials from which you need to be alert enough to choose materials that you judge as being acceptable or unacceptable for scholarly and research purposes.
In this sense, the Internet is analogous to--not a library, but instead--a hugh flea market of resources. There are lots of personal opinions out there on the Web, unverified and unsupported in a scholarly sense. There are also lots of technically accurate sources of information on the Internet, but sources that not reflective or representative of a complete picture of some topic or thing: you might visit an automobile manufacturer's site to see what good things they can say about a particular model of an automobile, but you would surely refrain from relying on that same site as a source for the bad features of that same model of car! You know what you should expect in the way of valid and reliable information, as you understand the motives of the owners of the web site.
One excellent classification of web sites according to their information quality is due to Alexander and Tate, the authors of a new book called Web Wisdom (see Amazon.com's listing), just recently published (March, 1999). They suggest five different categories of web sites:
Janet Alexander and Marsha Ann Tate are librarians at the Widener University library, Chester, Pennsylvania. Their book is intended to offer their readers assistance in evaluating or establishing information quality on the World Wide Web. They manage a companion web site, Evaluating Web Resources, from which the following five descriptions are taken. If you follow the link associated with each of the five categories below, you will find a series of criteria the authors recommend to you in assessing a site's information quality :
1. An Advocacy Web Page
is one sponsored by an organization attempting to influence public opinion (that is, one trying to sell ideas). The URL address of the page frequently ends in .org (organization). Examples: National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, the National Right to Life Committee, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party
2. A Business/Marketing Web Page
is one sponsored by a commercial enterprise (usually it is a page trying to promote or sell products). The URL address of the page frequently ends in .com (commercial). Examples: Adobe Systems, Inc., the Coca Cola Company, and numerous other large and small companies using the Web for business purposes.
3. A News Web Page
is one whose primary purpose is to provide extremely current information. The URL address of the page usually ends in .com (commercial). Examples: USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN
4. An Informational Web Page
is one whose purpose is to present factual information. The URL Address frequently ends in .edu or .gov, as many of these pages are sponsored by educational institutions or government agencies. Examples: Dictionaries, thesauri, directories, transportation schedules, calendars of events, statistical data, and other factual information such as reports, presentations of research, or information about a topic
5. A Personal Web Page
is one published by an individual who may or may not be affiliated with a larger institution. Although the URL address of the page may have a variety of endings (e.g. .com, .edu, etc.), a tilde is frequently (~) embedded somewhere in the URL.
Bibliography of Resources