LOC = Web Site Evaluation Form

Web Site Evaluation for Research

Title of Web Site ________
URL ________
Date visited__
Search tool used to find site_________

I. First Impressions

q Page loading (quick?)
q Advertisements (not distracting?)
q Author &/or Organization (labeled?)
q Images & captions (useful?)
q Grammar & spelling (correct?)
q Links (working?)
q Navigation (easy?)
q Date of last page update (recent?)

II. Looking Deeper

Content
q Information quality (current? accurate? complete?)
q Vocabulary (appropriate for audience?)
q Images (unedited?)
q Sound recordings, movies (complete?)
q Bibliography & webliography authoritative?)
q Help (FAQ, help pages?)
q Links from other pages (plentiful, reliable?)
q Cost (free?)
q Authorship
q Author/ organization (authority on topic?)
q Sponsor’s domain (well-known, reputable?)..

Bias
q Tone of site (objective?)
q Point-of-view (objective?)

Conclusions
1. Who is the audience for site (children, adults, students, consumers, etc.___
2. What is the purpose of site (inform, persuade, advertise, satirize, spoof, misinform, etc.?)__ _______ _______
3. Would you recommend this site to others?__
4. Why or why not?____
5. Would you use this site for your projects?
6. Why or why not?____

Web Site Verification Tools:
To check the number of pages that link to the selected site:
Go to a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Altavista.
In the search box, type link:http://webpageURL. The search results page will display pages that link to the selected site. Ex. link:http://www.loc.gov. In AltaVista (www.altavista.com), a link search on http://www.loc.gov/ yields 610,000 pages that link to www.loc.gov, the Library of Congress home page.
NOTE – Search engines respond differently to this exercise. Try several search engines with the same URL to observe this at work. Different results will also occur if the “http://” is deleted, links are written but not linked, or if the site is linked by its ‘alias’ URL.

To learn the sponsor of the domain name of the selected site:
Go to http://www.internic.net/whois.html or http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
Enter the domain name and extension. [Find the domain name by looking at the first part of the web address. Omit the “www” if present. The domain name will be the remaining portion of the first part of the web address. Ex. For http://www.loc.gov/ or a longer URL, http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/, the domain name is loc.gov.]

Web Site Evaluation Resources
Evaluating Information Found on the Internet, The Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University - http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/index.html

Hoax? Scholarly Research? Personal Opinion? You Decide!, UCLA College Library - http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/hoax/index.htm

Piper, Paul S. “Better Read That Again: Web Hoaxes and Misinformation”,. Searcher. Vol. 8, No. 8, Sept. 2000 - http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep00/piper.htm

Schrock, Kathy. “The ABCs of Web Site Evaluation”. Classroom Connect, Dec. 1998/ Jan. 1999. - http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/pdf/weval.pdf

Thinking Critically About World Wide Web Resources, UCLA College Library - http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/critical/index.htm

Using the Internet, Getting Started, The Learning Page, Library of Congress - http://memory.loc.gov/learn/start/inres/gen/using.html

(All sites accessed 3/2008.)


Portal Sites for Research
Virtual Reference Shelf, Library of Congress - http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html
Librarians’ Internet Index: Websites You Can Trust - http://lii.org/
WWW Virtual Library - http://vlib.org/