SWITCH Information Literacy Tutorials Home
Evaluating Information tutorial
Why Evaluate Information?
Audience
Scope & Coverage
Timeliness
Authority
Accuracy
Objectivity & Bias
Using and Evaluating Web Information
Evaluation Checklists
Glossary
Quiz
Tutorial Home

Evaluating Web Results

Search engines don't provide abstracts. Instead, you must go into each web site to learn about its content and evaluate its worth. To help you select good sites from the results page, train yourself to decode web addresses!

  • Look at the URL to identify what type of site is providing the information.
  • Know that a tilde (~) in a web address usually (but not always) indicates a personal folder
  • Personal pages require careful evaluation of the author's expertise.

One site example from a search engine URL Definition

Never select a resource based on how the web site looks. Be critical and save yourself time by composing good searches with the help of a librarian. Here are some tips.


OPTIONAL EXERCISE
Back Forward