1. FINDING AND EVALUATING WEBSITES

2. CRITERIA FOR EVALUATING A WEBSITE Authority Currency Accuracy Objectivity Content

3. AUTHORITY Is the author stated? Does he/she have the necessary education or experience on the subject? Is the page part of an individual's site or part of an organization's site? Who is the sponsor? How reputable is the sponsor? Is contact information available for the author or the sponsor?

4. ACCURACY Is the site free of obvious errors? Are the facts valid compared to other reliable sources? Does the author give proper attribution to borrowed information or knowledge?

5. OBJECTIVITY Does the author have a bias, taking a position on an issue, or giving only one side of the story? Is the site designed to promote or sell a service or product? What's the purpose of the site? To what audience is the author writing?

6. CURRENCY Does the web page show when it was last updated? Is the information up-to-date? How current are the links? Have some expired or moved?

7. CONTENT Does the site offer something unique that is not found elsewhere? Is the subject well-researched and covered comprehensively? Is the information well organized?

8. GOOGLE We know our students are using it but we can show them how to be better users of it. Advanced Google searching techniques

9. ALTERNATIVES TO GOOGLE There are many search engines that we can show our students and even require that they use for an assignment

10. GOOGLE SCHOLAR A scholarly version of Google, finds primarily journal literature as well as Theses/dissertations Books from scholarly publishers Preprint databases

11. GOOGLE BOOKS 3 categories of books In print and in copyright-preview & purchase options (links to Amazon, Borders, etc) Out of print but in copyright- available online for preview and purchase. Out of copyright-can read, download and print

12. DIRECTORIES/INDICES Yahoo directory Librarian’s Index to the Internet DMOZ

13. “CLUSTERING” SEARCH ENGINES KartOO Quintura

14. METASEARCH ENGINES Zuula Dogpile

15. SUBJECT SPECIFIC SEARCH ENGINES Scirus-science Healthline-health information Agriscape-agriculture MathSearch-math

16. DOMAIN SPECIFIC SEARCH ENGINES Searchedu.com Google US Government Search

17. CONTENT SPECIFIC SEARCH ENGINES ClipBlast & Blinkx-for video MuviBee-music & music videos

18. WANT MORE? Try http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchengines.html A search engine directory/guide

19. Find and explore a search engine that interests you Think about an assignment that incorporates the use of this search engine & meets one or more of the IL standards.