Guidelines for Evaluating Internet Resources

Internet web sites, though a potentially excellent source of historical information, demand as much if not more scrutiny than written or visual documents. As Jules Benjamin writes in A Student’s Guide to History, “Anyone smart or dumb, wise or foolish, sane or wacko, can publish on the Net. There is much serious material on the Net, and some of it may be very helpful in your research. But nothing separates the good stuff from the bad, the serious from the silly.”  The only filter for information found on the Internet is your own good judgment and critical thinking skills.

To guarantee that an Internet site you are using is a reliable, accurate and representative source of information, ask the questions below before you start downloading files or printing out information. This does not mean that a good web site will pass every test on this list; however, an unreliable web site likely will fail to meet many of these criteria.

1. What is the address or Universal Resource Locator (URL) for the site?  What does this indicate about the type of organization that has produced the site (.edu is an educational institution, .org is an organization, .com is a company) Will this be a permanent address that you safely can cite in a paper or project, or is it a temporary exhibit?

2. Who is the author or sponsor of the material? Does the web site clearly indicate who wrote the information there or what organization is responsible for its content?

3. Who is the audience for this web site? Is it intended for scholarly use? Popular use? Entertainment? Is the site primarily commercial in nature? Does the site seem designed to educate or to sell a product or point of view?

4. What are the scholarly standards and reputation of the sponsoring organization or individual? Is there any indication that the site has been reviewed? Has the project won any educational awards or commendations?

5. What was the original source of the material?  What was the process for digitizing material? Was any information lost in that process? Can you still access the original copy if necessary at an archive or library?

6. Is the site complete or a work in progress?  How might additions or corrections affect your claims about the documents? How might it make proper citation difficult?

7. Are the documents a selection from a larger collection?  What were the criteria for selection?  Who selected this material for posting on the Internet?

8. Are graphics, sound, and other multimedia features provided to give you information for your research? Are these features used for educational purposes, or are they irrelevant to the information on the site?

9. How long has the site been in existence? When was the last time material on the page was updated? How long will the material remain on-line? Will more material be added or corrections made?

10. Is there a recommended way to cite material from this collection?