Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Evaluating Internet Information

There's been a useful thread on Xtalk recently on Jeffrey Gibson's work on revising the on-line links on Steven Harris's New Testament Introduction. In fact it's something Jeffrey has been exploring on several lists, something I'm all in favour of. (Thread begins here). I think it an excellent idea to do this kind of thing interactively and drawing on expertise of the various e-lists, a great experiment in a kind of communal building of resources, and I am watching with interest.

As a part of the thread, Bob Schacht suggests that Jeffrey adds something on how to evaluate e-resources and David Barr mentions this useful guide from John Hopkins University:

Evaluating Internet Information

I dare say that there are plenty of other such guides, but I thought this one pretty much hits the right note. The only things I'd add would be that students ought also to think very seriously about using gateway resources or megasites in which academics have pointed up specific internet sites for them to use. The article in question tends to assume that the student has the library, with pre-selected information, or the internet, with non-pre-selected information, and that comparison is far too simplistic. It is also a bit out of date in its comments on search engines. No one now uses Yahoo! and the like to search the net, do they?

Update (2 November 2005): this post had attracted some silly and unfounded allegations that were irrelevant to the content, and one of those mentioned has asked me to remove those comments, and I am happy to oblige.