Types of Resources

Evaluating Web Resources

1. Check the URL
2. Scan the page
3. Quality Indications
4. Overall

Step 1. Check the URL

The URL is the address for the website. This can be easily found by looking up in the address section of your browser. For example, the URL for this page is http://web.syr.edu/%apfried/ews2.html.

What can we tell just by looking at the URL? Quite a bit...

1.a. Check the domain.

The domain is the .com/.edu etc in the URL.

Here are quick descriptions of the main types of domains and general information you can get just from knowing the domain information.

.com - Commercial Websites - These sites almost always have something to sell. Additionally, News Organizations/ Publishers use .com domains. Some of these sites already have advertisement deals, so they may have free access to information. Other sites require subscriptions --> Example http://www.biology.com, just so happens to be owned by Pearson Publishing.

.gov - Federal and State Government - These sites are often used for dissemination of information collected with tax money. Example --> http://www.nih.gov/science/, this is the National Institutes of Health website that is the portal or introduciton to all of their science content.

.org - Non-Profit Organizations - These sites are generally dedicated to their presenting singular points of view. --> Example http://www.biology.org, a not-for profit dedicated to providing information about several scientific categories.

.edu - Educational Institutions - These sites can have a wide variety of authors, so make sure you understand the authors credentials on a subject(e.g. is the site a student's site or a professor's site?).
Example 1 - Academic Site - http://www.biology.arizona.edu/, The Biology project at the University of Arizona.

Example 2 - Student Site - http://web.cortland.edu/frank66/sciev1.html Sample Position Statement on Dissection