Evaluating the Reliability of Web Sites

[first posted on my teaching blog, History Survey, on 9/20/2007]

Google is pretty good at finding relevant information, but how do you know if the information is reliable? Google places popular web sites at the top of its search results, but is that an accurate guage of reliability? Who can you trust in an environment in which anyone can publish anything?

The bottom line is verifiability. Can you verify the information with a source that you know is reliable? Can you verify that the author has the expertise to publish on this subject? But these questions bring us back to square one. What if you do not know any reliable sources with which to verify sites and their authors?

University librarians have put together some useful guidelines to help you sort through the jumble of fact and fiction on the internet. Georgetown University Library offers Evaluating Internet Resources, a check list that helps you to assess various aspects of each site you encounter. Study this list and ask yourself if you are as careful with information you find on the internet. If not, what habits should you change?

As you advance in your studies, the questions that the Georgetown site encourages you to ask will become second nature. Indeed, you will begin to ask related questions when evaluating the reliability of printed sources too. This observation brings us back to the theme of an earlier post. The most important thing you will learn at university is how to learn.

The Georgetown site points to something else as well. Your professors are not the only people on campus who can help you learn. You can also draw on the expertise of reference librarians.