This page is designed to help you sort through your research and only use sources of high quality.

    When do you need to use a source?   What is a quality source?

    The two R's: Is it relevant?  Is it reliable?
 

Is it relevant?

What types of support can you use to back up a claim of Fact?  Value?  Policy?
These are your sources.

Is it reliable?

The Library

Not everything you get from the library will be good, but most of it will be.  The databases help greatly to narrow your search and almost always yield quality results.

The world wide web provides many ways to research all of these kinds of sources.  Some methods are more fruitful than others.  We learned about Firstsearch and Ebsco.  But there are others.

When on the web in general, the primary way of getting around is a search engine like google.  There are also "meta-search" engines like www.dogpile.com that search a database of search engines.  Search engines can be great but they can be dangerously inclusive.  You have to use a little "search-savvy."

Domain Names

A domain name's suffix is your first clue in evaluating a site for it's reliability.  Some examples:
 
 

www.blahblahblah.org	probably a non-profit group, possibly with slanted or "one-sided" information. example
www.whatever.com	anything goes.  Be careful. example
www.state.fl.us.gov	Government site.  Reliable but dry and probably complex to navigate. example
www.anything.net	originally intended for international sites, but anyone can use it now.  Basically the same as .com
www.something.utk.edu	probably reliable.  It may, however,  be irrelevant website created by a student.

So the suffix only gets you started in analyzing your site.  For more precision, we need to look at the presentation.

Appearance

I am not shallowly suggesting that a nice-looking site is always a good source.  However, be suspicious of sites that do not look professional.  example.

Context

An online version of a print journal is almost always reliable.  Peer-reviewed journals are the best.
What's a peer reviewed journal?  It's a journal where articles (essays, etc.) are screened by a group of experts in the field as opposed to a single editor.  example.
 
 A personal webpage is the least reliable.  Publishing is so easy that anyone can make a webpage and anyone else in the world can view it.  Our problem is that we don't need just "anyone" in our paper.  Adequate support means quality sources, especially when dealing with facts.

If you're not sure of the context, "back up" in the site to the initial domain name.