A Guide to Internet Resources in the Humanities, Community College of Philadelphia

Evaluating Internet Sites

Citing Internet Resources: A Guide for Students

Searching the Internet / Evaluating Internet Sites / Citing Internet Resources / MLA Style / APA Style / CMS (Chicago Manual of Style) / COS(Columbia Online Style) /Home

I. Evaluation checklist

(Go to the CCP library site for an extended description of evaluation )

     1. Purpose -- Why was the site created?

     2. Source -- Who created the site? How reliable is the author? Is the author affiliated with any organization?

     3. Content -- What information is on the site? Is there a bibliography?

     4. Comprehensiveness -- How thorough is the site?

     5. Currency -- When was the site created and updated?

     6. Links -- Are the links valuable and current?
 

II. Important information to record from sites

Note: If you use a source, go to Citing Internet Resources page for instructions about recording sources in a bibliography.
 

III. Examples of evaluation

Music

    Matt Boynick, The Classical Music Pages.   Created 1996, revised 1999.

Boynick is an orchestra conductor; there is no sponsoring organization, though the site is part of OrchestraNet. The site is organized by epochs, musical forms, composers, and instruments. There are samples of music, text, and pictures. Though the site is still under construction, and some of the music links are dead, there is much useful information. This is a good site.

Art

    University of the Arts students, Baroque art.

This is not a good site. There are no dates, and authorship is unclear. It takes ingenuity to discover that this site was created by UArts undergrads. There is no bibliography, no citations for text; there are nice links and graphics for Asian art. . . . Or rather, there were nice links and graphics for Asian art. This site has recently disappeared, another indication of unreliability.
 

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Practice evaulating these sites:

Baroque architecture

Romantic chronology

Modernism and postmodernism in contemporary music

 

Further sources for evaluation

http://www.inform.umd.edu/LibInfo/literacy/

http://www.cyberbee.com/guide1.html

http://www.hopetillman.com/findqual.html