Guide to Finding Web Sites You Can Trust

The January 2006 issue of Google's Newsletter for Librarians contains a concise and helpful guide titled "Beyond Algorithms: A Librarian's Guide to Finding Web Sites You Can Trust " by Karen G. Schneider, the director of Librarians' Internet Index (LII). She describes a "a five-point system for separating the wheat from the chaff" that focuses on availability, credibility, authorship, external links, and legality. The guide briefly describes each of these "big five show-stoppers" and provides shortcuts for testing each area. For example, in considering external links, "[l]ook for evidence that the web site maintains its links, such as notes indicating when a page was last updated, and beware of student project web sites and personal web pages with many, many links!"

SOURCE: BarclayBlog