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)
Fee - $185,000 with waiting period of 2 years.
Domain Registration
Currently unrestricted:
.com
.info
.net
.org
Currently require proof of eligibility
.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”
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
Human, expert-created subject directories
Human, crowdsourced subject sites
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
General search engines – algo-based
Google, Bing
Content closed (static web pages)
Limited search options; influenced by social web
Social Web
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
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
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
Over 93 million revolution-related tweets
within Egypt and between Egypt and other
countries
Facebook
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
Wikipedia
Human-created databases, directories
“I need a few good sites on solar
energy”
Mahalo, Ipl2.org
Video Sharing and Q&A Services
“How do I repair my garage door
opener?”
YouTube, Yahoo Answers, Answers.com, Mahalo
Answers
Mining Today’s Social Web:
The trust factors
People you follow
Twitter-human created Tweets
“What’s the buzz on Beyonce?”
People you know
Post a question to friends and family
“What type of Mac should I buy?”
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
What’s viral right now?
Experts Search locates authoritative Twitter
users on topics of your choice
Advanced search filters
Site/domain
Language (10)
Twitter user
Date, time posted
Twittermining Tools
Twitter.com
Requires a (free) account
Only the latest 2 weeks available
Searchable by hashtag (#)
Author-designated keyword or significant term
or phrase
#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