USD Information Literacy Lessons: Page 5

Why is it important for you to know how to evaluate Web resources?

Overview of Online Materials: The Internet

What is the Web?

Overview of Internet Use

>> Overview of Online Materials: The Resources

How Selective is the Web?

Search Engines, Meta-Search Engines, and Subject-Based Search Engines

Subject Directory

Things to Remember About Search Engines, Meta-Search Engines, and Subject Directories

Problems with Websites, Example 1

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Continued

Stormfront.org

Problems with Web Sites, Example 2

Websites: Example 2

Websites: Example 2 Continued

Internet Reliability

How to Approach Web Resources

Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages

Criteria for Evaluation: Author or Webmaster

Criteria for Evaluation: The Author’s Point of View

Criteria for Evaluation: The Publisher

Criteria for Evaluation: Purpose

Criteria for Evaluation: Accuracy, Completeness, and Objectivity/Bias

Criteria for Evaluation: Accuracy

Criteria for Evaluation: Relevance

Criteria for Evaluation: Coverage

Criteria for Evaluation: Currency

Criteria for Evaluation: Visual Literacy

Criteria for Evaluation: Visual Literacy Continued

Consider the Web Design

Rules of Thumb when using Web Resources

Web Evaluation Lesson IL Exercise

Here are some statistics to keep in mind about information on the Web:

• More than 7.5 million new pages go onto the Web every day.
• The Web contains an estimated 2.5 billion documents.
• The average life span of a URL (i.e. Web address) is 44 days.*
• There are more than 2,500 search engines/directories on the Internet.*
• The largest search engine (AltaVista) has access to between 14%-16% of the URLs at any one time.
• The largest domain is .com, comprising 35.3% of all Internet hosts.
• Not everything in print is available online, especially if it was created before 1990.
  *Fowles, Charlotte.  "Evaluating Web Resources."  Vermillion, SD: I.D. Weeks Library, 2000.

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