Internet Research Info.
FINDING QUALITY SITES FOR RESEARCH
For research purposes, it’s best to cite a professional,
governmental, or educational site.
Commercial sites can be of less quality because profits are often their
motivation, and personal sites and blogs are generally unacceptable. The
extensions on the URL address, like .com
or .net are intended to tell
what type of establishment owns the site.
Common extensions include:
MOST ACCEPTABLE
.edu – educational org., most
.k12 –
.ac
- academic institution (outside the
.sch – school
sites (used by some schools outside the
.gov – government agency
.mil – military institution
.org -
any organization
SOMETIMES ACCEPTABLE
.com –
company (usually .co in the
.net - network
NEWER COMMERCIAL
EXTENSIONS – again, sometimes acceptable
.biz, .name, .pro,,
.info
RECOGNIZING PERSONAL SITES
Sometimes individual’s personal pages look professional.
Personal pages can contain worthwhile information. However, they are not verified and can be
highly biased; therefore personal pages are not valid sites for research. Below are tips to recognize a personal page
(a page that’s unacceptable to use for research)
Look after the first / in the URL name. If you see:
► A name in the URL, such as jdoe and a tilde ~ or % or the word users or people or members
frequently means you are on a personal website.
► Even if a site has the extension .edu (which indicates
it’s affiliated with a college or university) you still need to keep a look-out
for personal pages. Individuals
affiliated with schools can post their own personal thoughts. Watch for the tilde ~ followed by a personal name. An example was the below site,
http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html
Though
·
Today
this site is no longer available at that address, but can still be accessed if
you know how to research the history of a website.
► pubweb (see
above address) means “public web server”; this is another clue to personal
postings.
FINDING THE PUBLISHER OF A WEBSITE
Researching website owner information may be revealing if
you’re at all concerned about the quality of information on a site and want to
know more about its origin. Some sites
may appear legitimate and appear at the top of a Google search list, but they
actually contain dishonest, inflammatory, racist, or hate messages.
► If you’re ever unsure about the
information on a web page and wish to know who owns the site or has published
the material, go to www.easywhois.com.
► In the search box labeled Domain name, type in the address of the
site you’re researching. Click next.
► You will be asked to enter a
provided random number into a box. Type
in the number and click next.
► Whois? tells you
the dates the site was created and specific contact names and addresses at
which the organization is based. You
also learn the name of the server, the registrant. This may lead you to another site that
reveals more about the originating organization.
From such research, you can learn
the background and motivation of the site’s creator and determine if their
information is valid or biased.
CHECK THE EXTERNAL LINKS
External links are like digital threads that come from other
sites. A quick look at who has linked to
a site might help you gain perspective about the quality of its
information. External links can be made
by anyone in the world; any author can choose to link to a document and may
choose to link to his/her own work.
These links are invisible; there is no link police. Examining a website’s external links is an
important step in validating internet information.
► Go to www.altavista.com
► Type in link in
the search box, then add the URL of the site you’re researching, and click the Find button. Be sure to leave no space before or after the colon.
Ex.: link:http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html
► You’ll find an assortment of sites,
mostly Information Literacy sites. When
examining a site’s external links, ask 3
questions:
1. Who’s linked to this site?
Read the URLs and titles of the external links.
Are they schools or commercial
sites? Look if there’s a pattern in the
types of sites linked.
2. What is the purpose of this link? Why have groups or individuals
chosen to link to this site? Web authors
choose to link to other sites for specific purposes. Speculate on what those purposes might be.
3. What do other sites say about the
information on this site? Gain perspective about a website by
reading what another site tells you about it.
Cross-reference information and look for hidden bias.
► NOTE – If you
produce 0 results in researching a URL, try truncating the URL.
This
can also help if the URL is long. To
truncate, delete one folder at a time, moving from right to left. Each time, delete to the previous /.
For example, if you remove /di/intro.html
from the above “pubweb” address, you’ll receive a
longer list of external links.
FINDING THE HISTORY OF A WEBSITE
The internet allows us to explore a collection of drafts
that chart the history of a website by using the Wayback
Machine.
► Go to www.archive.org.
► Type in the URL of a site or page you want to research in the
box and hit the Take Me Back button.
► Each listed date shows that current
version of the site. Sites that have controversial backgrounds often edit later
versions of their site to remove information that might expose their
origins. By comparing early versions to later ones, you can often find
revealing informative about the website’s host that is later removed. A further internet search about the referenced
names and websites on the site’s early version will tell even more about the
site’s founders.
Adapted
from November Learning / Building Learning Communities
http://novemberlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=159&type+art&site=178&parentid=id