LIBRARY GUIDE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS: Evaluating information

Question yourself about the page's authorship:

• Is it an individual or collective author (an organization)?
• Can you identify who is the author? (name, e-mail, address, affiliation, other)
• Can you find the author's CV or qualifications?

Search in the page for:

• Contacts: name, e-mail, affiliation;
• The "About us" section.

Question yourself about the page's publishing or updating date:

• Can you see the publishing date or the updating date anywhere in the page?
• Are there any outdated links?

Search in the page for:

1. The creation or updating date (it is usually available at the end of the page)
2. The update frequency of the page (it usually appears in the "About us" section)

Question yourself about the page's URL:

• the URL can help you understand what is the page origin and gives you some hints on its nature.

Search in the URL for:

1. .edu ou .ac - academic servers
2. .gov - governamental servers
3. .org - non governamental servers
4. .co; .com, or .net - comercial servers

Question yourself about the objectivity of the information you have found:

• Is the information presented in a factual or biased way?
• Can you spot any different points of view on controversial subjects or not?

Question yourself about the information's precision:

• Do the facts and results match with those of other specialists?
• Is the information well structured and organized?
• Is the text free of spelling and grammar errors? 

Question yourself about the page's purpose:

• What is the purpose of the page: is it to inform, entertain or sell?
• What was the author's motivation? (what led to the creation of content)
• Does the information match your information need?