Evaluating Your Sources

Evaluating Your Sources
What is it?	Evaluating the source of the material you're reading means finding out what you can about both the author of the material and the organization that is publishing the material on the internet.
Why do it?	One of the ways you can establish the validity of information is to find out who wrote it and who approved it for posting on the internet. It's much the same as having surgery done by a doctor who was trained at a reputable medical school, operates in a hospital, and has done this procedure many times instead of going for surgery to a friend who has had the same operation himself. They both know something about it, but there's no question about who's the expert!
How do you do it?	There are several things you can check to find out about the expertise or qualifications of the author. First, some articles include that information. Some articles quote experts and include information about the credentials of the expert in the article. A second indicator of the reliability of the source is the organization that is sponsoring the website where the information appears. If it's a well-known agency, a major medical school, for example, then it's more likely the information will be reliable than if it appears on a student's webpage. Sometimes the last part of the domain name will give you information about its reliability. A third indicator is the quality of the other souces that the author quotes or links to the article.
Task #26	Examine this article from the internet. Click on links ("Publishing Information," "Home," etc.) to information about the source of the article and the organization that is publishing the article on the internet. Then e-mail me the following information about the reliability of the author of the article, the original publisher of the article, and the internet publisher of the article: name, evidence of reliability (what information are you given about the person or the organization that gives you reason to believe the information is reliable), and your evaluation of its reliability.