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Introduction to Information Literacy


Contributor / Author

  • Has the author written other articles on the topic, are their credentials listed anywhere?
  • Is there an author listed at all?
  • Is the author on social media or otherwise reachable? Do they have an email address? (This helps you know if they are a real person.)
  • Is this person an expert who is interviewed or cited elsewhere, by others? Have you found their work before?

Publisher

  • What do you know about the publisher or sponsor of the content? Is there any discussion of when they were founded, why, and by whom?
  • Check other content to see if they have ever edited or made corrections to previous work.

Bias

  • Can you sense or locate any strong bias? Are you being persuaded to feel a certain way?
  • Are you there to be entertained, informed, or are they hoping you will purchase a product or service from them?
  • Are there ads on the site? If so, what kinds of ads?

Currency / Recentness

  • When was the source published or updated? Is there a date shown at all?
  • Does it matter to your argument/topic if the information is current or not? Why or why not?

Reproduced

  • Was it reproduced, condensed, or edited down from another source?
  • Where and when? Why might they have done so?
  • If it was reproduced,  can you find the original source easily? Did this other site announce the original source? Was permission obtained?

Citations

  • Is there a bibliography or are there citations/links to related credible sources?
  • Conversely, are there credible sites or sources that refer/link to this content? In what context?

Relevance

  • Is the content relevant to your topic and the requirements of your assignment?
  • Does it meet the scholarly qualifications you are asked to include?

Accuracy

  • Is the data easy to track down for yourself? Is it hard to access, behind a firewall?
  • Are there frequent -- or any -- spelling or grammatical errors?
  • If you are looking at a source on the Internet, are most of the links functional or dead? 
  • A dead link is not one you can cite!

 

 

The above was modified and expanded from https://www.citationmachine.net/