Evaluating Web Resources
The Internet is a volitile, continually changing environment and contains a huge amount of unevaluated information. When evaluating a site, keep in mind the following:
Is the information accurate?
Is the information consistent with what you have found in other sources? Is it well written, well organized, logically presented, and free from spelling and grammatical errors?
Is the author an authority on the subject?
Can you easily determine the information's author or sponsor? For institutional or corporate web sites there should be an "About" section that clearly identifies authorship. If an author is not given, consider the site's creator. Sites without this information should be considered questionable.
Does the author exhibit any biases in posting the information?
Can you determine the author's purpoase in posting the information? If the author's or the location's purpose is to pursuade or to sell to you, judge the information accordingly.
Is the information current?
Does the web site display when it was last updated? Select a few "best hits" from search results and follow the links on those pages.
Had this information already been evaluated?
Search for a subject expert who has posted information or links to evaulated information. Review this evaluation critically.
Select a few "best hits" from search results and follow the links on those pages.
Subject indexes: Yahoo or About.com
General search engines include: Google, Teoma, Exalead, Alltheweb
Visual display search engines include: KartOO, Grokker, WebBrain
For scholarly literature which Babson may or may not own, search Google Scholar. To search scholarly, refereed journals in databases to which Babson subscribes, search EBSCOhost or ProQuest.
Also see Research Guides on the Library web site.
