WEB-BASED INFORMATION SOURCES
100 points

Objectives
	Scientists, as well as most people, increasingly rely on communication of ideas and retrieval of information from websites.  Websites provide a vast amount of information, much of which is readily retrievable and is more current than printed text.  Unfortunately, not all websites are of equal value and not all are of equal quality. The purposes of this exercise are as follows:

1.  To introduce students to websites relevant to geology and oceanography.
2.  To identify the variety of sources on the web
3.  To learn to evaluate the quality, authenticity, and value of information on various websites
4.  To learn techniques to evaluate the quality of websites.

Rationale
	When conducting any kind of scientific or other research, it is absolutely necessary to be able to assess the merit of the information.  When working with the printed word, there are various means by which this is done.  Although the following comments will be worded in terms of scientific information-gathering, the concepts apply to all disciplines.
	
	There are fundamentally two kinds of literature sources, primary and secondary.  Primary sources are those in which new information is generated, and the author(s) of the work are responsible for the accuracy and validity of the work.  The quality of the work is judged by noting whether a scientific approach has been taken in the work, whether the work has been rigorously reviewed by peers, and by determining whether the conclusions of the author(s) are supported by independent observations.  This type of work is published in scholarly journals, monographs, or memoirs.

	Secondary literature sources are those that draw upon and summarize the information generated in the primary literature.  Textbooks and most reference works are of this type.  The information within secondary sources may be every bit as good as that in the primary literature; however, the author of the secondary source is responsible for the presentation and correctness of presentation of the information but not for the information itself.  In order to test the value of secondary sources, it is important to examine the references from which the information was gathered and to note the manner in which primary information is cited.  Textbooks do not tend to cite primary sources and one is then forced to judge the value of the book by the quality and reputation of the author and the publisher.  Most reference works do cite primary references carefully.  Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism, except in textbooks.

	The same general statements apply to evaluation of websites, although the manner in which websites are judged is different.  Nearly all websites are secondary sources and, therefore, it is extremely important to be able to judge whether or not the material is authoritative.  There are several types of websites, denoted by their suffix:

.edu websites are those restricted to educational institutions and, generally, the institution bears some responsibility for the quality of information presented.  These websites tend to provide a high level of accuracy.

.gov websites are those restricted to governmental agencies and, again, the level of accuracy of information is high (we hope).

.org websites are websites for agencies and institutions on a not-for-profit basis.  The reliability of these websites is generally good but could be biased, depending on the aims of the agency.

	.com websites are commercial sites and the reliability of the information must be carefully considered and verified, as with any commercial advertising.  Anyone or any organization can generate a .com website; thus, the quality of the information ranges from poor to excellent, depending upon who makes the website. .net websites are generally similar to these.

.ca, .ar, etc. websites are abbreviations for foreign countries and, as in the United States, there are educational, governmental, organizational and commercial sites whose reliability is similar to those in the United States.

Assignment
	In this exercise, you will examine the relative quality of websites presenting information on a topic of your choice relating to geology or oceanography.  To do so, you will perform the following steps and write a summary of your results.

1.  Select a topic in the general area of geology or oceanography that is of interest to you.  Examples of topics are global warming, whales, volcanoes, trilobites.

2.  Using the search engine of your choice (e.g., Google), enter your topic and generate a list of websites.

3.  Record the following basic information
	A. Topic title
	B.  Search Engine used
	C.  Number of website “hits.”

4.  From the “hits,” select at least one <.com>, one <.org>, one <.gov>, and  one <.edu> website.  State .govs are acceptable (i.e. geology.state.oh.us).  Select sites that are relevent to your topic and to science.  For example, if you chose dolphins, do not evaluate the site for the Miami Dolphins football team and conclude that it did not provide information about dolphins that live in the sea.  Avoid hits that lead only to a single pdf or other file. You should evaluate an entire site.

5.  Surf each of the websites that you selected and answer the following questions for each.
	A.  What is the website address?
	B.  Are there well-defined links to other websites with relevant material?
	C.  In your opinion, was the website easy to surf and user friendly?
	D.  Are authorities for the information readily identified?
	E.  Is primary information cited, as it would be in a term paper or in some other easily found way?
	F.  Did the site provide what you judge to be useful, informative material?
Do not provide one word answers to these questions (i.e. yes, no).  Explain your answer.

6.  Look up your topic in Wikipedia.org.
	A.  Evaluate (and type out your evaluation of) the information using the criteria listed in #5 above.
	B.  How does Wikipedia gets its information?
	C.  Who evaluates this website?
	D.  Who does the fact checking for Wikipedia?
	E.  Who can add information to the encyclopedia entries on this website?
6.  Write a brief (two pages, double-spaced, in addition to the basic data pages) discussion of the quality of the information you found on the internet regarding your topic and the quality of the websites for gathering valid information on a scientific topic.  You can base this on the four you looked at for this assignment and/or your general experiences with websites.  Evaluate Wikipedia for its reliability in finding information on scientific, or any, topic.

Definitions:
sight: a sense, allowing one to see, or something that one sees (as in, to see the sights in New York or to have an impaired sense of sight)
site: a location, as in an archaeological site or a website
cite: to give reference to or quote, or to call upon officially, as in to cite a source in a term paper or to get cited for exceeding the legal speed limit