Evaluating Web Content in the 2.0 Era
Since the early years of the Web, librarians - as well as teachers and instructors - have been posting criteria for evaluating content found on the Web. These have been designed as guidelines to help students figure out what to trust in a Web environment on which anyone can publish. I'm sure we're all familiar with examples. There's some very good, very insightful material out there.
The Web has gotten much more complicated since the days when garden variety Web sites were the sole type of placement for content, and when many of these guides were written. So I joined with my colleague Trudi Jacobson, Head of User Education at my library, to put together a guide that targets the 2.0 environment. We collaborated on a guide ten years ago, so she was the perfect choice to work with on this new one. Our original guide is charmingly outdated. This time around, we've covered Web sites (of course!), free research sites, document repositories, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, social bookmarks, and multimedia.
It was a challenging project to work on. In a way, it's fair to say that evaluative criteria don't really change based on the type of site or material encountered. While this may be true, it's also the case that students need help with looking for cues in different types of environments. In fact, some students aren't even sure what they're looking at. This is why we include a definition of each phenomenon and feature a section on how to tell the difference between a blog and a wiki. We also call atttention to such problems as content that has no verifiable authority, and RSS imports that might be undetectable. So there were new issues to address. Although Trudi and I set out to put together a guide to evaluation, we also found ourselves creating a basic teaching tool about the current state of the Web as a source of information.
Trudi and I are interested in feedback. We've shown the guide to a few colleagues, and would be happy to hear from a wider audience.
So, please take a look and tell us what you think: Evaluating Web Content.
Comments
yay! thank you for updating this! I teach evaluating web sites both at UConn to my Communication Science grad & undergraduate students, and also at Simmons GSLIS to library school students. It's harder & harder to find resources that are still relevant -- the 8-10 year old material doesn't cut it anymore. :-(
This one looks really handy. Any chance of getting a printable version, either html or pdf? I will definitely show this to my advanced reference students this spring!
Posted by: Stephanie Willen Brown | January 13, 2008 08:32 PM
Stephanie, Thanks! You've made an interesting suggestion about offering a printable version of this material. For the time being, the new guide is open to comments, so Trudi and I are expecting to be tweaking it for a while.
In recent years, I've developed a preference for Web-original documents for this type of material, because they are so easy to update and keep fresh. But this one could be useful as a handout. I'll consult with Trudi about your idea. Many thanks for the suggestion.
Posted by: Laura Cohen | January 14, 2008 08:31 AM
Very nice Laura. You and your colleague did a great job. Your inclusion of some of the web 2.0 things makes me realize the similar guide my library has is sorely out-of-date.
Posted by: Jonathan | January 14, 2008 03:35 PM
This is a brilliant guide! And timely too.
Posted by: Mark Pearson | February 13, 2008 03:43 PM