Searching the Web and Evaluating Web Sites

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Search services on the Internet can be put into two categories: directories and search engines.

Directories- are databases of Web sites organized into categories or topics.  Subject directories are created by people who select sites based on previously determined selection criteria and put the sites into categories.  

Be aware that the selection criteria varies by directory. For example  Yahoo!'s staff do not carefully evaluate content when choosing to add items to the database; therefore scholarly sites are haphazardly mixed in with everything else. (Taken from http://library.albany.edu/internet/checklist.html)

Click here for a list of subject directories with higher selection standards.

When you search a directory's contents the directory attempts to match your keywords and phrases with those in its written descriptions of the Web sites. Directories are also browsable by category, for example in Yahoo! :You could click on    Travel>Hawaii>Airline Tickets

When you use a search engine you are NOT searching the entire Web at that given moment but searching the index created by the spider at an earlier time.

Spiders regularly return to the web pages they index to look for changes but you will not be able to access new information until a page has been both "spidered" AND "indexed". The time this process takes depends on the individual search engines and how often they send their spiders out.

          Google, AlltheWeb, and AltaVista are examples of search engines.

The major differences between Web directories and search engines:
 

DIRECTORIES	SEARCH  ENGINES
Can be browsed	Searched by Keyword
Built by human editors	Built by automated programs ("spiders")
Results based upon matches with: category names site names site description URLs	Results are based on relevance: number of times search terms appear on a page popularity--number of links that point to the site.  Google is an example of this.

 *Remember no one search engine/directory indexes the entire Web. If you are overwhelmed with your results try one of the Subject Directories  that only include academic or quality sites.  [List of Recommended Subject Directories]

Evaluation

1. Know the Criteria:
 

Authority	Can you determine the author or sponsor of the Web site? What are the author/sponsors' qualifications?
Accuracy	How reliable is the information?  Almost anyone can publish on the Web  Many Web resources not verified by editors and/or fact checkers Web standards to ensure accuracy not fully developed
Currency	Is the content of the work up-to-date? What does the date on the web page mean, 1st created, last revised?
Coverage	What topics are included in the work? To what depth are topics explored? Often hard to determine extent of coverage on web sites.
Objectivity	Is the information presented with a minimum of bias? Are the goals/aim of the web site clearly stated?

2. Use the Domain:

  The domain designates what type of agency is running the server.  For example:

.gov    is  federal government

.edu    is educational

.org     is organizational (not for profit)

.com   is commercial

.mil    is military

In the path, there may be a ~ (tilde) followed by a personal name to designate a person who is responsible for the Web site.

Use google's Advanced Search feature to limit by domain.

Let's look at a couple of sites.....
http://www.martinlutherking.org/ma-chapter18.html

http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/libcamps.shtml

3. Use Subject Directories

As stated above, some subject directories evaluate Web sites before including them in their database. Be sure to use those with higher selection standards. (Click for list)

Web Sites for Primary Sources

American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library

Avalon project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy

EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe 

Making of America: A digital library of primary sources in US social history (1850-77)

World History Primary Sources and Major Web sites:

            Links to many sites including: 

• Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) --includes thousands of digitized documents from many nations relating to the Cold War

• Eighteenth-Century Resources

  As with any other source to which you need to give credit, Web sites also require proper citation.  Remember that the purpose of citing your sources is to:

1. direct your readers to the specific information you have used.
2. give the proper intellectual credit to the author of the information provided.

Use the FIND IT list on the Library home page, choose Reference Sources, then Citing Sources.