6.4: Evaluate websites located in a complex search

Table of Contents

1. Evaluating websites
   1. Evaluation criteria
   2. Authority
   3. Tracing website ownership
   4. Credibility
   5. Evaluating credibility
   6. Accuracy
   7. Bias
   8. Emphasis
   9. Currency
   10. Establishing currency
   11. Currency indicators
   12. Problems in establishing currency
   13. Previous versions of a Website
   14. Clarity of presentation
   15. Presenting information clearly
   16. Use of multimedia
   17. Ease of use for visually impaired clients

Authority

Here you need to consider the expertise and reputation of the organisations or individuals connected with the website. When the information is explicitly attributed to an author, you can assess their reputation. Thus information supplied by an acknowledged expert in a field or found on the website of a well-known and respected organisation carries a lot of weight.

Of course a website may give no direct clues as to authorship and hence authority. In this case you can try to find out who owns the site. In Outcome 2 of this unit, we covered examining the URL of the website and carrying out a WHOIS search to find out this type of information.

1

URL Type of Organisation In searching for information about horse breeds you might come across this site: http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/ Remembering Outcome 2, what type of organisation does this URL suggest? .edu tells us that this site belongs to an educational institution in the Unites States. In fact, the site is that of the Department of Animal Science of Oklahoma State University and therefore you can expect an amount of authority. Note that some colleges and universities allow their students to create home pages which are not authoritative in the least. You can usually spot this by the name of the student in the URL. .

Let's have a look at Tracing website ownership ...