Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask

This online tutorial is intended to explain why it is necessary to critically evaluate information found on the Web and how to effectively and efficiently use the Internet's resources to find information. It was written based on the experiences of the Teaching Library staff at UC Berkeley who taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced courses on this same topic.

The objective of this tutorial is to:

• Provide a current, up-to-date remote and local learning resource for anyone interested in finding information on the World Wide Web;
• Provide a platform for beginners to the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the Netscape browser;
• Recommend and explain effective, state-of-the-art search strategies applicable to any research interest.

Table of Contents

• What is the Internet, the World Wide Web, and Netscape? - An Introduction.
• Things To Know before you begin searching....
• Recommended Search Strategy: Analyse Your Topic & Search With Peripheral Vision
• Three Families or Types of Search Tools - Links to all search tools tables
  • Search Engines - Comparison table of search engines - How search engines work
    • Boolean Searching guide
    • Meta-Search Engines
  • Subject Directories - Table comparing some human-selected collections of web pages
  • Invisible Web - What it is, how to find it, and its inherent ambiguity (searchable databases on the Web)
• Beyond General World Wide Web Searching
• Evaluating Web Pages: Why and How
  • Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask
  • Why Evaluate: Rationale & Web Page Evaluation Exercise and form
• Style Sheets for Citing Internet & Electronic Resources
• Glossary of Internet & Web Jargon
• Handouts and PowerPoint used in our Current Classes

This resource was written and is maintained by Joe Barker at the UC Berkeley Library.

Click here for the online tutorial.