Skill Goal: Evaluating information you find on the Web
Subject: Islam on the Web

You have to be careful about the information you find on the Internet. Almost anybody can create a Web page and put anything on it. In fact just about everybody has! This is both a valuable aspect of free speech and a real danger when you are doing research.

Let's continue with the "Holocaust" example used in a previous chapter. Suppose you were looking for information on the Holocaust, what would be the most reliable source of information?

1. Another student's term paper.
2. A document written by an Anti-Semite who was trying to deny the Holocaust took place.
3. A book written by a respected professor and published by a major publishing company.

The "right answer" is number 3.

When information is published in books, magazines, and newspapers, it is usually "vetted" by editors. As a reader this means you can rely, to some extent, on the reputation of the publisher. For example: a book published by Harvard University Press should be reliable; an article in the New York Times is expected to meet certain standards of accuracy. On the other hand, a book published by some political party will probably be less reliable, and most people would not go to People magazine for political information. In other words, with print media, we have all sorts of guides to the quality of the information. But on the Internet, search engines will find all sorts of data, "published" by anyone who wants to. You have to learn how to sort it out. The links below offer some discussions about how you can evaluate Web resources.

Make sure to read the first two items. The others are longer and explain in more detail what the issues are.

Short Discussions

• Criteria: A Guide to Evaluating Resources T. Michael Kelly, Humanities Reference Librarian, Miller Nichols Library, UMKC
• Evaluating Internet Resources: A Checklist

A Longer Discussion

• Evaluating Quality on the Net. Hope N. Tillman, Director of Libraries, Babson College, Babson
  Park, MA [Rather long]

The Exercise

Make sure to read the notes above on evaluating Websites.

Goal: To develop skills in evaluating data on the Internet.

Assignment:

Compare three Websites that examine Islam. Use the Checklist to evaluate these resources, and state which site you think is the most reliable, the fairest, the most scholarly. Is the most reliable site also the most entertaining?

• Answering Islam
• The Answer to Answering Islam
• IslamicCity
• Al Muhaddith
• Islamic History Sourcebook