~ABCs of WEB EVALUATION~

Accuracy / Audience / Authority / Bias/Perspective / Content / Currency
Is it error free? / Is this site appropriate for my needs? / Author’s/Authors’ name or names / Are there sponsors for the site? / Does it contain in-depth/detailed info.? / Is the info. current and up-to-date
Is it credible? / Is it too simple or elementary? / Author’s/Authors’ title or titles / Are there advertisements? / Is it scholarly or academic? / Are revision dates noted?
Is it well maintained? / Is it too technical? / Are they experts in their field? / What does the author have to gain from publishing the web page? / Does it contain light/simple facts? / Are there any broken links?
How do you know? / Is it meant for the general public? / Who sponsors this page? / Can the author’s statements be proven or disproven? / Are there grammar/spelling errors?
What is the url extension? .com, .gov, .org, .net, .edu / Is the writing style trying to influence your opinion? / Is it well organized?
Remember even well-written web pages may have an agenda! / Is the info. available in another resource?
Is there a bibliography available?

LIBRARY ORIENTATION NOTES

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It is intuitively obvious that too much change will put a strain on people and organizations. The futurologist Alvin Toffler (1970) has made a detailed study of the acceleration of change and its psychological effects. He suggested that it would lead to a set of severe physical and mental disturbances, which he called the "future shock" syndrome. J

Part of the problem is caused by the fact that technological advances have made the retrieval, production and distribution of information so much easier than in earlier periods. This has reduced the natural selection processes which would otherwise have kept all but the most important information from being published. The result is an explosion in often irrelevant, unclear and inaccurate data fragments, making it ever more difficult to see the forest through the trees. This overabundance of low quality information, which Shenk (1997) has called "data smog", is comparable in its emergence and effects to the pollution of rivers and seas caused by an excess of fertilizers, or to the health problems caused by a diet too rich in calories.

Heavy information overload: the world's total yearly production of print, film, optical, and magnetic content would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage. This is the equivalent of 250 megabytes per person for each man, woman, and child on earth.

Age of Info-Glut, Info-Garbage
Info-Glitz and Info-Glimmer