The Internet gives access to huge amounts of information that can be used to research a wide variety of topics. The majority of this information is largely unregulated by any agency, government or legal body so it is essential to learn to evaluate web sites for accuracy and intent. The following links should help you to make informed decisions on what can be considered a valuable resource or a vague one. One of the first things to check is the domain name of the site. Domains ending in .gov are registered to government agencies and .edu to educational institutions. This does not mean that they will always have accurate information, but this is a good indication of where the information originates. Remember to look around the site to try to ascertain whether or not the content was created with a specific agenda in mind, or to see if they are sponsored by someone else. Google also has dedicated searches, such as the government search which only searches .gov domains and the university search which will search any one of a multitude of universities.
Evaluating Internet Research Sources at Virtual Salt
Why we need to evaluate what we find on the Internet?