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Latest Update 09 September 2006

INFORMATION COMPETENCY
RESEARCH RESOURCES 2
a work in progress
PART 1 (recognize and access information) |  PART 2 (evaluate, use, and document information)

PART 2:
Evaluating Information
Evaluation Tutorials  | Evaluation of Websites | How To Know
Using Appropriate Resources  |  Scholarly Resources  |  Scholarly Journal

Using Information
 Documentation
(citing sources: attribution, incorporation, MLA/APA style, bibliography)
Fair Use
(quotation, paraphrase, summary, plagiarism, APEx formula)

Professional Research
Law: Shepardizing and other legal research

PART 1:
Searching for and Finding Information:
 Clearinghouses, Directories, Discussion Groups, Newsgroups, Chat, Finding People and Businesses and Services,
Libraries, References (dictionaries, etc.), Search Engines, and Using Search Tools 

General Information
How To Know | General Information Literacy Guidelines | Information Competency Tutorials | Research Steps

EVALUATING INFORMATION

TUTORIALS. The following information competency tutorials provide knowledge and practice in evaluating information (including using a variety of resources, understanding the ethical and legal or political issues surrounding information technology, thinking critically about mass media information).

CORE Research Tutorial.  (Purdue)
CSU Information Competence Tutorial (Cal Poly)
UTexas TILT

The Evidence and Evaluation Website, a handout for Floren's English 100 class, provides a short, easy-to-use tutorial on the topic of evaluating information. top

EVALUATING WEBSITES.  The Internet is a large electronic network which currently has no centralized monitor and is not regulated for reliability, authority, or accuracy. When you use the Internet and its World Wide Web to do research, it's important to evaluate the credibility of the sites you access. Also, when you are developing your own Web pages, you'll want to follow good design practice. The following sites--last accessed on 25 April 1999--provide helpful information.

Available at <http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v8/n3/smit8n3.html>, this article includes a linking bibliography, containing information within the Websites listed below and linking to most of them. In this article, Alastair G. Smith reviews available Internet resource evaluation criteria in print and on the Internet, and includes a chart or "toolbox" of quality evaluation criteria. Smith also maintains a virtual library on the topic at Alastair Smith's World-Wide Web Virtual Library Site for Internet Evaluation (at <http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm>).   This Website is primarily a large list of pointers to criteria for evaluating information resources, particularly those on the Internet, intended to be "particularly useful to librarians and others who are selecting sites to include in an information resource guide, or informing users as to the qualities they should use in evaluating Internet information." the site was last modified 17 February 1999.  top

Available at <http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/skill26.htm>, this essay shows that you can appraise a source (a) by examining the bibliographic citation and (b) by doing a content analysis. In a bibliographic citation analysis, you evaluate the author's credentials, date of publication, edition or revision, publisher, and title of journal (the authors of this essay also show you how to distinguish scholarly from non-scholarly journals). In a content analysis, you examine the parts of the source itself--such as preface and bibliography--and assess the intended audience, the quality of reasoning, the extent of coverage (here you learn something about the difference between primary and secondary sources), and the quality of writing style. In content analysis, you also locate critical reviews of books or articles to provide more substance to your assessment. Last  revised 20 October 1996, the Website includes links to a hypertext guide to library research, Seven Steps to Effective Library Research, as well as links to other resource guides and bibliographies.   top

USING APPROPRIATE RESOURCES

SCHOLARLY or POPULAR?  When you do personal research, you may find valuable information in any number of popular media or from informal surveys of your friends or associates. Personal-interest research is designed to give you some background for continuing a search. It helps you make decisions on practical life matters (like which house to rent or buy, which herbal remedy to use for a cold, etc.). Popular magazines, television and radio shows, friends--these can be valuable sources of information.  Once you begin an inquiry into the nature or quality of your knowledge, you are going to want to consult scholarly resources. Generally speaking, research at the college level, is by definition "scholarly" research.   top

SCHOLARLY RESOURCES.  Scholarly resources include those persons, institutions, publications, and associations whose primary goals are discovery of information, creation of knowledge, and communication of insight, rather than popularity or accumulation of material wealth.

Rereading the information above about Website evaluation can help you determine the relative depth and breadth of scholarship in a source you may locate on the Web. As a rough estimate, you may begin by looking for "edu" at the end of the domain name; educational institutions promote the disinterested search for information and understanding; commercial sites, on the other hand (those ending in "com") are promotional publications designed to increase sales or profits. Sites labeled "gov" (government) or "org" (organization) may be more or less reliable or scholarly, depending on the purposes of the particular Web weavers and their employers.

Of course university professors and scientists are, like all of us, subject to the bias of experience, value, and belief; in other words, highly educated or academically and scientifically trained people cannot be completely objective or open-minded about the subjects they are studying. However, because academics and scientists are expected to think critically and remain skeptical of all unsupported and uncorroborated claims--their claims tend to be more reliable than those made by people whose primary goal is either to make money or to get or keep political power. So, what is the lesson? Look at the academic and scientific sites first; but keep your critical-thinking antennae active.

SCHOLARLY JOURNAL. What is a scholarly journal? For a brief review of the differences between scholarly journals and other kinds of periodicals (like magazines, newspapers, and e-zines), check out the following Websites:

USING INFORMATION

When you want to use the resources you have found and evaluated to report or otherwise communicate your findings and your thoughts about these findings, you should do two things: (1) make sure you are citing your sources with adequate attribution, smooth incorporation, and conventional documentation; and (2) make sure you are citing your sources responsibly following the Fair-Use Doctrine and avoiding plagiarism when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize information in your writing.

PLAGIARISM.  Plagiarism is a term referring to a violation of fair use, copyright, and intellectual property principles and regulations.  How to avoid plagiarism? Take this advice from Marion Foerster, Public Services Librarian at MiraCosta College:

In order to fully comprehend what constitutes a research paper, it is important to understand what research is. Good research is both creative and personal. It starts with questions that you ask about your subject. These questions you ask will be your own and how you go about finding the answers will be a uniquely individual process. In this way you will bring yourself and your mind into the research process. Your paper will end up conveying your point of view, which will add creativity and passion to your subject. Giving your paper a "voice" will also help you to avoid plagiarism. (Reference to the Foerster's WWW Library Research Website accessed on 25 April 1999 at <http://www.miracosta.edu/home/mfoerster/ResearchPage/definitions.html>).

In addition to the Floren Website on Fair Use, consider reviewing the following Websites, which define plagiarism, show how it's detected, and give advice on how to avoid it:

PROFESSIONAL RESEARCH

LAW.  Barger on Legal Writing | U. North Carolina Law Research Tutorial | top

HOW TO KNOW. In his online text, How To Know, Robert McHenry (editor at large for Encyclopaedia Britannica) begins with a remark by the American humorist Artemus Ward: "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we do know that just ain't so."  As you consider the evaluation and responsible use of information, put your learning in a context by reflecting on how you think you know what you think you know, or how you know what you know you know.  McHenry's book is quite helpful in providing such a context.  As he writes, in the very first paragraph:

The so-called "Information Age" in which we are said to be living is notoriously a time of information explosion and overload. Ask anybody. On the other hand, it is only occasionally noticed that this Information Age has not automatically made us all smarter. More information does not mean more knowledge, less error, better judgments. Those real benefits come only with effort and skill -- thinking, in other words, and thinking well. To the contrary, there is evidence that the flood of cheap information has encouraged credulity. Certainly the Internet has made possible the mass distribution of the most arrant nonsense, which seems to find a waiting and willing audience.

Whether it is actually true that individuals are in fact and in feeling overwhelmed by masses of information and the consequent need to sort out the good from the bad, the possibly true from the likely false, the constant talk of it has begun to call renewed attention to a very old problem: What do we reliably know? What can we reliably know? How ought we to regard the many claims to knowledge that we confront, and would like to make, daily?

How to Know considers the question of how we come to believe that we know things. What is this stuff we call knowledge, and where does it come from? How far can we trust it? If it is less than entirely reliable, what then? Most important, it argues that knowledge doesn't just happen--that each of us is actively involved in its construction--that we can do the work well or not well but will have to take responsibility for the outcome in either case. (How To Know)  top

Created 31 July 1997, by Gloria Floren. Revised 09 September 2006
Contents Copyright 1997-2006 All rights reserved Gloria L. Floren.
Letters Department, MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive, Oceanside, California 92056. U.S.A.
E-mail gfloren@miracosta.edu