Web Page Evaluation Worksheet
Use this worksheet to easily evaluate the usefulness of Internet research resources. As best you can, ask and answer the questions below of each and every item you discover in the course of your research. Choose only those resources best suited to the research need.
AUTHORITY
1. Examine the URL; Domain name is owned by:
Is it a personal page (~ or % or “users”, “members”, “people”)?
Is the domain appropriate for the content? (edu, com, gov/mil/us, org/net, non-US, other)
2. Author’s Credentials [expertise of individual or group; original creator-primary source?]. Google the author, group, organization.
3. Author/Producer can be contacted at:
AUTHENTICITY, SOURCES, DATES
4. This site is updated ___________ (frequency) and was last updated on:
5. This site is sponsored by __________________. Is there an “About us”? If there are no such links on the page, truncate the URL backwards (delete everything after each /) to get to the source.
6. Does it have a bibliography? Are there links to other resources? Do they work?
7. This site is authentic (not forged, not altered) and contains these well documented references:
8. I verified the information in this/these other non-Web source(s):
PURPOSE, VIEWPOINT, WHY
9. This site gives a balanced perspective; is biased; provides links to other viewpoints; omits an important aspect …?
10. This site is informative, provides facts, data, explains …. Or does it persuade, sell, entice …?
11. Its purpose is:
12. Its intended audience is:
13. It addresses these issues:
14. The issues addressed meet my research need in this way:
15. After careful examination I discovered this site is a spoof, parody, satire, ironic [see: Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division]
WHAT DO OTHERS SAY / CITATION ANALYSIS
16. This site is linked in these other sites and they have this to say about it: [Hint: in Google, AltaVista, search: link:all or part of the url]
17. This site is also found in these search directories [because they find, evaluate, select, organize, and sometimes even describe quality Internet information resources]:
- BUBL Link: http://bubl.ac.uk/link/
- Digital Librarian: http://www.digital-librarian.com/
- INFOMINE – Scholarly Internet Resource Collections: http://infomine.ucr.edu/search.phtml
- Librarians' Internet Index: http://www.ipl.org/ref/
- The Scout Report: http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/about/
- The WWW Virtual Library: http://vlib.org/
18. More help with evaluating Web resources
· Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask, UC Berkeley - Teaching Library Internet Workshops http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html
· Evaluating Information Found on the Internet,
· Evaluating Websites, Purdue University- http://www.lib.purdue.edu/rguides/studentinstruction/evaluation/evaluatingwebsites.html
· Evaluating Web Pages,
· For annotated descriptions of many other good guides to evaluating web pages, search the subject "Evaluation of Internet Resources" in the Librarians' Index to the Internet - http: lii.org.
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Last updated July, 2010.