How do you know if your source is credible or not? Here's a few guiding questions that I found at a university library's website*:
- Does the site have a scholarly apparatus: a bibliography and endnotes?
- Is there a clear author? What are the author's credentials, biases, and perspectives?
- Who is the publisher? A university or historical society? A company?
- Is the thesis built on a foundation of primary source material?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the site?
- How does the site help me understand my topic?
- What questions are left unanswered by the author?
Tips on finding credible sources:
- One clue that can help you decide if a site is credible is the domain name. In general, sites that end with "edu" (educational sites), "gov" (government sites), or "org" (nonprofit organizations) offer more credible information than sites that end with "com" (commerical sites trying to sell something).
- Google your topic along with the keyword "library guide" or "libguide". This will lead you to library web sites about your topic, and librarians generally list only high-quality sites on their pages.
- Specialty Search Engines
- IPL2: works like Yahoo, but finds mostly quality sites discovered by librarians
- InfoMine: scholarly internet collections
*http://guides.lib.ua.edu/content.php?pid=126639&sid=1087764
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