Deb Palmer worked as a public librarian for 10 years, including children’s services, reference services, and young adult services. She is now the Internet Information Coordinator for the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, a private non-profit education fund, working with teachers on infusing technology into the curriculum. You may reach Deb by email at dpalmer@lalc.k12.ca.us or through the Learning Exchange. Check out these additional resources that can help you evaluate Web sites

Evaluating Web Sites By Deb Palmer LA-CLIC Information Coordinator Los Angeles Educational Partnership TECHNOLOGY HAS BROUGHT NEW MEANING TO THE PHRASE "information at your finger tips." The diversity and number of information sources, whether it is books, CD-ROM products, or Internet web sites, is growing exponentially. The ease with which technology has made it possible to publish information does have certain drawbacks. The Internet alone currently has several million web pages available, published by everyone from the third grade student who lives down the street from you to the United States government. For students in urban and rural schools that often have limited library collections and resources, access to the Internet provides opportunities and advantages that were unimaginable even ten years ago. With these opportunities also comes a need for librarians and teachers to help people of all ages become sophisticated in evaluating the "authority" of information found on the Internet. Authority consists of the qualifications or background that someone has that makes them an expert source of information on a particular topic, as well as the quality and reliability of the information itself. Given that any person or organization can post information on the Internet, evaluating which sources are going to be more authoritative in their information than others is important. The problem then becomes one of how to go about evaluating that authority. When considering resources located in libraries, such as books, periodicals, or CD-ROMs, much of the evaluation has already been done for the student or researcher. Before a book is published, for instance, an editor decides that it has potential. The information is checked for correctness and edited before it goes to press. Further, before materials are purchased for the library, the librarian makes a decision (based on reviews of the work in professional journals, the reputation of the publisher, and a variety of other criteria) that the work is credible and worthy of purchase. While the student/researcher still needs to judge the relevance of the item to their work and consider how current the information is, the preliminary work has already been done for them before the material is even placed in a library collection. MORE