After completing this section, you will be able to use specific criteria to evaluate the quality of information resources.
As you identify resources on your topic, it is important to evaluate each resource for quality. If you have selected articles from scholarly journals, you can be fairly certain that the content is accurate, objective, and written by an authority in that field of study.
Image: (CC) J. Bouma: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakebouma/3345296623/
If you locate information on your topic using a Web search, you'll want to be especially attentive to factors that will indicate whether or not the information is reliable. A website can provide a number of clues about the quality of its content, so it is important to critically evaluate every resource you locate on the open Web.
There are a number of different approaches to evaluating websites for quality; most include verifying the accuracy, authority, objectivity, and currency of information.
Image from The New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner, 1993.