Networked Information Resources

1
Networked Information Resources

• Critical evaluation of online resources

2
Evaluating online resources

• Authorship
• Publishing body
• Point of view or bias
• Referral to other sources
• Verifiability

3
Indicators from the URL

• Is it somebodys personal page?
• What type of domain does it come from?
• Is it published by an entity that makes sense?

4
Indicators from the content

• Are sources documented with footnotes or links?
• Are there links to other resources on the topic?
• If reproduced information (from another source),
  is it complete, not altered, not fake or forged?

5
Indicators from the page

• Who wrote the page?
• Is the page dated? Is it current enough?
• What are the authors credentials on this
  subject?

6
Usage and linkage indicators

• Who links to the page?
• Is the page listed in one or more reputable
  directories or pages? (e.g. Librarians' internet
  index , Scholarly Internet Resource Collection )
• What do other say about the author or responsible
  authoring body?

7
Does it all add up?

• Why was the page put on the web?
• Might it be ironic? Satire or parody (e.g. The
  onion, the sokal affair link to the article

8
Division of intellectual labor

• I know very little about the codes of knowledge
  used by the architect and the builder in the
  design and construction of the home, but I
  nonetheless have faith in what they have done.
  My faith is not so much in them, although I
  have to trust their competence, as in the
  authenticity of the expert knowledge which they
  apply something which I cannot usually check
  exhaustively myself (Giddens, 1990, The
  consequence of Modernity)

9
Second-hand knowledge

• it is not that we have conducted a direct test
  of their knowledge. Rather, we have to cite
  indirect tests or indexes of credibility. The
  situation is one in which we may be faced with a
  number of different people all claiming to be
  knowledgeable on the subject, how can we choose
  among them, or how can we defend our choice once
  made? (Wilson, 1983 p.21).

10
Social production of knowledge

• The way a publication contributes to knowledge,
  if it does, is by changing the collective opinion
  of the specialist group. The size of a
  contribution is measured by the size of the
  change produced in the collective opinion.
  Producing knowledge is not something the
  individual can do. All one can do is make
  proposals to the group and hope that they will be
  accepted in some form. If they are, and if the
  proposal is accepted by the group as settling
  some question for the time being, then a crucial
  step toward a contribution of knowledge has been
  made. (Wilson 1983, p.48)