Transcript Slide 1

Evaluating Information
on the Internet
Getting the Best from the Web
Who we are . . .
 Reference Librarians available to
you 60 hours a week
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 Your questions are our priority!
EMILY
HART
JOSEPH
CHMURA
JENNIFER
NACE
MICHAEL
HUNTER
ALWAYS know where you are
on the Web -The url is your guidepost
New Top Level Domains
(ICANN 1/11/12)
 .com domains almost exhausted for new
website names
 “Someone got there first”
 New businesses must pay domain brokers for
an address or register a new one with unnatural, insignificant words
 Now possible to purchase a unique TLD
(.mycompany or .ourtrademark or
.ourbrand)
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Fee - $185,000 with waiting period of 2 years.
Domain Registration
 Currently unrestricted:
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.com
.info
.net
.org
 Currently require proof of eligibility
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.edu
.gov
.xxx
.coop
.int
.aero
.mil
.museum
.asia
DIAL: Evaluating Sites
 Document:
Verify factual accuracy
Can it be corroborated by you or others?
Is there scholarly support for assertions?
Check the Format and Tone
Is it well-organized and easily navigated?
Is there an overt (or covert) bias,
advocacy purpose or other hidden agenda?
DIAL: Evaluating Sites
Caveat lector
 Be especially careful if you find yourself
agreeing with the point of view of the
author(s). You may not notice information
that is
 Incomplete
 One
sided
 Poorly researched
 Undocumented
DIAL: Evaluating Sites
 Institution or Sponsor:
What is the reputation of the sponsor(s) or affiliated
organization(s)?
Check their identity if you have a question about
the site
Use Whois for domain ownership
information:
http://www.internic.net/ or
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois
DIAL: Evaluating Sites
 Author(s):
Check for credentials and accessibility (e-mail
or other contact information)
Navigate until you find this information; if you
don’t, don’t use the document
DIAL: Evaluating Sites
 Linkage or Affiliations:
Overt: Outgoing links and/or advertisements
found on the page
Covert: Incoming links
(Use Google or Yahoo and simply type link:
followed by the URL in the searchbox. You will
be given a list of all incoming links and much
more about the site)
What other sites exist by the same author(s) or
sponsoring organization(s)?
(You many need Whois for this)
Wikipedia:
Authorship
 No requirements
 Most content contributed by a core of about
1,000 “regular, registered users”
 IP addresses of anonymous editors are recorded
in the page history
 About ¼ of articles have only one author
 Articles average 2.7 authors each
Editorial Control (?)
Volunteer “administrators”
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Monitor changes in a section or topic area
Arbitrate conflicts i.e. “edit wars” and decide when to
“protect” an article from further revision
 Peer Review Status - granted by a larger number
of reviewers as a sign of higher quality
 Featured Content Status (“The Best of W.”) peer reviewed sites selected for this honor by
further review and labeled with a Star
 Featured Portals – Large subject metasites of
high quality
Web Topography:
Layers of the web and what you can get from
each…
 Curated web
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Human, expert-created subject directories
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Human, crowdsourced subject sites
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Infomine.ucr.edu ipl2.org
Content well-vetted and locked
Wikipedia, Quora
Content open (crowdsourced)
Human/crawler hybrids DuckDuckGo ddg.gg
Web Topography:
Layers of the web and what you can get from
each…
 General Web results
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General search engines – algo-based
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Google, Bing
Content closed (static web pages)
Limited search options; influenced by social web
Social Web
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Blogs, Twitter, Facebook
Content open and closed (crowdsourced)
Topsy.com –social web metaengine
The Shape of Today’s Social Web
The very latest in…….
 Public responses/attitudes/primary sources
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Breaking news, local to worldwide
Trending topics and people
Latest product reviews
Companies and competition
 Security, technology topics (latest virus, etc.)
 Locate individuals and their networks
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Who they follow, who follows them
People interested in a topic/hobby
 Monitor collaborations
Social Networks in the Egyptian Revolution
1/25/11-2/11/11
Enabling protesters to become citizen journalists
Facebook, Twitter
The Heartbeat of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011
 From January 10 to February 10:
 Twitter
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Over 93 million revolution-related tweets
within Egypt and between Egypt and other
countries
 Facebook
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2313 revolution-related pages and events
created
461,000 posts by 9,815 users
216 Egyptian “cyber-revolutionary” FB groups
formed
Mining Today’s Social Web:
The trust factors
 People you don’t know
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Wikipedia
Human-created databases, directories
“I need a few good sites on solar
energy”
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Mahalo, Ipl2.org
Video Sharing and Q&A Services
“How do I repair my garage door
opener?”
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YouTube, Yahoo Answers, Answers.com, Mahalo
Answers
Mining Today’s Social Web:
The trust factors
 People you follow
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Twitter-human created Tweets
“What’s the buzz on Beyonce?”
 People you know
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Post a question to friends and family
“What type of Mac should I buy?”
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Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Bing (login via
Facebook)
SOCIAL SEARCH TOOLS
Topsy – www.topsy.com
Real-time search of Twitter and Google+
 Unlike other real time se’s, ranking is based on a
deep archive of social media
 Trending metrics used in ranking
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What’s viral right now?
 Experts Search locates authoritative Twitter
users on topics of your choice
 Advanced search filters
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Site/domain
Language (10)
Twitter user
Date, time posted
Twittermining Tools
 Twitter.com
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Requires a (free) account
Only the latest 2 weeks available
Searchable by hashtag (#)
Author-designated keyword or significant term
or phrase
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#rochester
#jobs
#marketing
Facebook’s Graph Search
Search using the knowledge of your friends
 Personalized search results based on your
circle of FB friends and public posts
 “A collection of entities and their relationships
on Facebook” (FB Graph Search engineering
team)
 Designed for full natural language queries
 Made public 7/15/13
 Must access via your FB account