Information Literacy Session 2

Information Literacy Fundamentals Session 1 – video script

Hello everyone! I am Mr. Davies, and I am the Library Director here at UNM-Los Alamos. In this video, I will be talking about some fundamental concepts relating to searching, finding, and evaluating information in a variety of print and online formats.

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When you need information for any purpose, it’s important to understand what the need is, how much information is required to meet that need, what the best sources of information are to meet that need, and where and how to find the information. And, perhaps most importantly, you need to understand how to evaluate the information for reliability, accuracy, and credibility.

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So for example, if you need a recipe for tonight’s
dinner, it’s simply a matter of deciding what you want to
eat, knowing where to find a good recipe (either your
own recipe file, a recipe book, or searching Google), and
then choosing a recipe that looks good, and will work for
how much time and effort you have or want to put into
getting the ingredients and preparing the dish.
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More relevant to what you’re learning here, you will
have to complete assignments of different lengths, for a
variety of purposes, meeting certain criteria as
determined by your instructors. These will require
varying amounts of information, using a variety of
formats of information that may exist in a variety of
places, and that are found in a variety of ways.
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For these assignments, evaluating the information
will require more effort than what you would put out
deciding on a recipe for tonight’s dinner. Additionally,
you then have to assimilate the information you find to
make it your own, and then properly give credit to the
creators of the information by citing the sources.
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As you begin the process, it will probably be
tempting to just go to Google and try to find everything
you need on the Internet. And, that is understandable
because a Google search of the Internet is easy and
convenient. But Google and the Internet are just one
tool, and not everything can be found on the Internet,
and even more importantly, not all information found is
reliable, credible, or even accurate.
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For some purposes, searching Google may be
perfectly adequate and appropriate. However, for many
other purposes, especially those associated with
information needed for completing course assignments,
or for professional purposes, Google alone is probably
not going to be adequate. As a result, you will need to
know where and how to discover other sources of
reliable and appropriate information.
And, to that end, I will be talking about available
formats of information, both print and online.
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In today’s world of information, all of the things that
have traditionally been published in a printed format
have the POTENTIAL to be accessed online. However,
the reality is that much of what is in print is NOT online,
and in fact, a lot of new information is still being
published only in print. Many sources that are now
available online certainly have their benefits, yet many
others come with significant challenges.
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Books, of course, are perhaps the oldest most
accessible information format, which continue to be
published in print or online as eBooks. Some titles are
published in both formats. Print books, of course can be
found in bookstores, in libraries, and ordered or
purchased from a variety of retail businesses.
E-books can be purchased and downloaded onto a
computer or tablet. Most academic eBooks that you may
need to access for research purposes, are available in
libraries by searching the online catalog, Google Books,
Google Scholar, and other databases.
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Reference sources, such as dictionaries,
encyclopedias, and atlases are great for finding quick
answers to questions, or for gathering background
information on a topic. These materials can be a good
starting place in the research process. Reference sources
are readily found in libraries in print and/or online. They
can be located through the online catalog as well as
online reference databases. Additionally, search engines
like Google, allow you to find, to give one example,
definitions of words through open access online
dictionaries.
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Newspapers, magazines, and journals, collectively
called “periodicals” are available both in print and online.
These formats of information are probably the most
beneficial and usable as online documents. I will be
talking more about these shortly.
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The Internet or “web” is familiar to all of you, and I
will be talking about it in more depth later as well.
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Media resources, such as audio recordings, video
recordings, and photographs can also be found in both
print and online. They are readily available for purchase,
for downloading, and they are accessible through free
online services, paid online services, and online library
catalogs. These materials, especially audio recordings,
are more and more, becoming available almost
exclusively online.
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A “periodical” is anything that is published regularly
and periodically (meaning daily, weekly, monthly,
quarterly, and so forth), such as newspapers, magazines,
and professional and academic journals.
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When using information in magazines and journals,
it is important to understand the difference between the
two types. Magazines are a format for providing
information that generally appeals to a wide and diverse
audience. Magazine articles, such as those found in
People, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, or Time, are
typically written by journalists or free-lance writers who
are not necessarily experts in the topics they write about.
The writing style tends to be informal, informative and
often entertaining. The publication process is “editorial,
”
meaning that submitted articles go before one or more
editors who work for the publication, before they are
published.
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In academic and professional fields, information
found in journals provides the most current and reliable
information available. The process for publishing articles
in journals is typically faster than it is for publishing a
book. The science and medicine professions particularly
rely on journal articles for current information almost
exclusively.
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Academic and Professional journals are formats for
providing information within a specific field or
profession. These types of articles ARE written by
experts in a particular field or profession, and the
intended audience is individuals in that profession or
individuals who are interested in or are learning about
that profession. These articles are scholarly, formal, and
often full of terminology used in the field. The
publication process is “peer-reviewed” or “refereed,”
meaning that before an article is published, it goes
before a panel of other experts in the particular field,
who review it for accuracy, logical methodology,
relevance, and whether or not it would be a worthy
contribution to the field.
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There is a handout in your packet that provides
more details about the differences between magazines
and journals.
In most cases, you will need to use professional and
academic journal articles for course assignments rather
than magazine articles.
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The Internet or “web,” for our purposes here, can be
divided into two broad categories: the “visible” web and the
“invisible” web. The “visible” web consists of sites that are
generally available to anyone at no cost (except of course, for
“paid” business sites that charge users to access the site
content). “Visible” websites are generally found using a search
engine such as Google.
The “invisible” web consists primarily of searchable
databases to find information contained in those databases.
Private companies, educational institutions, and libraries have
paid subscriptions to the databases, which are then made
available for use by employees, students, faculty, or the general
public who visit those companies or institutions. These
databases and the information in them, cannot be accessed
through Google, and the web simply functions as a gateway to
the databases. And, even though the databases have graphical
user interfaces that make them look like “websites,” the
documents contained in them are not really considered web
resources.
Information found through the “visible” web has a number
of challenges that are not obvious. And, “visible” web
information should be thoroughly evaluated before it is used
for academic, professional, or life and death-related purposes.
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Why? The visible web is not refereed or monitored in any
way, and as a result, anyone can put information up on the
web. Just because it is there does not mean that it is accurate
or reliable.
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To some extent, all information resources should be
evaluated using the CRAAP test. Resources from the “visible”
web particularly need to be thoroughly evaluated in this way.
The CRAAP acronym refers to Currency, Relevance, Authority,
Accuracy, and Purpose.
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Currency refers to the timeliness of the information.
Questions to consider in this evaluation step are:
 When was the information published or posted?
 Has the information been revised or updated?
 Is the currency of the information important for your
topic?
 Is the information current or out-of-date for your topic?
AND
 If it is an online resource, are the links working?
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Relevance refers to the importance of the information to
your topic. Questions to consider are:
 Does the information relate to your topic or answer your
question?
 Who is the intended audience?
 Is the information at an appropriate level for your
purposes?
 Have you looked at other resources before choosing this
one? AND
 Would you be comfortable using this resource to complete
a research paper or project?
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Authority refers to the actual source or creator of the
information. Questions to consider in this step are:
 Who is the author, publisher, source, organization, or
sponsor?
 Are the author’s credentials or organizational affiliations
provided?
 What are the author’s credentials or affiliations?
 Is there contact information for the author, organization
or publisher? AND
 In the case of web resources, does the web address or URL
reveal anything about the source? In other words, is it a
.com (commercial) site, a .edu (educational) site, a .gov
(government) site, a .org (nonprofit organization) site, or a
.net (network) site?
I will be talking about these distinctions in more depth
shortly.
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Accuracy refers to the reliability, truthfulness and
correctness of a resource’s content.
Questions to consider in this part of the evaluation are:
 What is the origin of the information?
 Is it supported by evidence?
 Is it from a source that has been peer-reviewed or
refereed?
 Can it be verified in another source or from your own
personal knowledge?
 Is there a bibliography or works cited list included?
 Does the language or tone seem unbiased and free of
emotion? AND
 Are there spelling, grammar, or typographical errors?
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Purpose refers to why the information exists.
Questions to consider are:
 What is the purpose of the information? To inform,
teach, sell, entertain or persuade?
 Do the authors or sponsors make their intentions or
purpose clear?
 Is the information fact, opinion, or propaganda?
 Does the point of view appear to be objective and
impartial? AND
 Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious,
institutional, or personal biases? If so, are they
appropriate to the context of the resource and for
your purposes?
While it is not always necessary to have favorable
responses to ALL of the CRAAP test questions, it is
important to determine which questions best apply to
the resource being evaluated and have favorable
responses to the most important ones.
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There is a CRAAP Test form in the handouts that
accompany this video that can be used to evaluate
websites in particular.
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Here are a few shortcuts to finding typically authoritative
and accurate websites:
 Check the domain name extension in the URLs, which
are again, .com, .net, .edu, .gov, .org.
o Sites with .edu, .gov, and .org extensions are
generally more trustworthy sites; however, they
still require some degree of evaluation.
 Use links established on library and university
websites, reputable company sites, and reputable
non-profit organization sites.
 Use links to websites in online catalogs and other
reputable online sources such as Encyclopaedia
Britannica Online.
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Here are some important points regarding the challenges
in using information on the “visible” web that I mentioned
earlier.
 There is a common misconception that information on the
web is a replacement for traditional (print) information
sources. It is not. Not everything can be found on the web.
Remember that the web and search engines such as Google
are just one tool for finding information.
 The web is not well organized, and information on the web is
not cataloged on the web.
 Search engines like Google, by default, function using fulltext keyword searches, potentially resulting in a long list of
results, and lots of irrelevant sites in the list of results.
 Information can be updated at any point in time, requiring
that the date of access be included when citing web
resources.
 Web addresses (or URLs) can change at any time.
 And, pages or entire sites can be removed without warning.
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When evaluating resources and information, in most
cases, you can assume that materials in academic library
collections and that peer-reviewed academic and
professional journal articles are authoritative and
accurate; therefore, you probably only need to evaluate
library materials for relevance, purpose, and in some
cases, how current they are, depending on the subject
matter.
Web resources, however, must be thoroughly
evaluated for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy
and purpose.
If you have questions or concerns about a resource
during the evaluation process, check with your instructor
or a librarian. They will be able to help you evaluate a
resource based on the focus of your topic.
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The following is a demonstration, evaluating a
website about Edgar Allan Poe. The URL is also indicated
in your packet if you would like to examine the site on
your own.
While this is only one evaluation, it is a good
example of how to approach evaluating any website.
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Poe Decoder site evaluation
This website, “Qrisse’s Edgar Allan Poe Pages,” is a
.com website meaning you will have to do a thorough
evaluation of this site.
You can assume that because of the “/Qrisse” in the
URL, that these pages are a sub-category of a larger site,
which may need to be explored and evaluated as well.
There are lots of links and information about Edgar
Allan Poe, but we don’t yet know how authoritative and
reliable this information is.
On the side, there are a number of links to various
pages by this web author about Edgar Allan Poe.
In the middle, you can see there are a lot of links to
information about Poe himself.
Looking through this page, nothing is visible so far that
tells anything about the author of the site.
If you scroll to the bottom it shows when the site
was last updated, which, as you can see was fairly
recently, so we at least know that the site is still active.
To do a thorough evaluation of this site, you should
explore any of the links on the side that might take you
to more information about the author of the site or that
might provide a list of resources he consulted to create
the site.
For the sake of brevity, I will take you through the
links I found that produced important information.
I’m going to click on the “Poe Decoder” link. Looking at
this page, scrolling to the bottom, I can see a link to
Christopher Halqvist, which takes you to his personal
page. If you click on “About Me” here in the side menu,
it will take you to a page of biographical information
about him.
Underneath the set of photos showing him with long
hair, there is a statement that provides information
about his education and his interest in Edgar Allan Poe.
While he is clearly brilliant given the subject areas he
studied, it only says that he has an interest in Poe, so his
level of knowledge and expertise is not clear to us at this
point.
Back at the author’s pages, having explored all the
links, I have determined that there is little to no evidence
to support the information in these pages. You will be
able to see more details about this when we look at the
completed CRAAP Test Form for this website.
Going back to the “Poe Decoder” site, I am
interested in any of the information about the site, the
contributors, and by or about Christopher Halqvist
specifically.
And there is indeed a statement about the purpose
of the website and the Poe Decoder group. They specify
that accuracy of information is very important to the
purpose of this site.
There are links to what appear to be essays about a
number of different works by Poe, which I will come back
to in a moment.
There is a link to Qrisse’s pages which is the sub-site
that I started with, and it also includes a statement about
what is included in his pages.
Further down on the page, there is a clear copyright
statement for the website as well as the essays in the
website.
Going back up to the menu of essays, I will look at
the essay about Poe’s poem The Raven, which is by
Christopher Halqvist himself.
At the top, there is a more definitive statement
about his qualifications, as well as a specific copyright
statement about this essay.
There are also links to specific sections of the essay
and a works cited list, which is very important.
Skimming through the essay, it is clear that it is a
critical essay about the poem, which could be very useful
in the context of an analysis paper about The Raven.
Clicking on the works cited link, I can see what
resources were consulted in writing this essay.
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Bonus Web evaluation introduction
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Bonus web demonstration
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Here is the completed CRAAP Test Form for the Poe
website that was just evaluated. I will point out a few of
the more important observations in the evaluation.
Under Currency, you can see that Qrisse’s pages were
recently updated, but the overall Poe Decoder site was
last updated in 2001. In the context of literature,
however, having more up-to-date information is not as
critical as it would be for other topics such as science and
medicine.
Relevance, of course, will be up to each individual
person to determine. In the context of finding critical
information about Poe and his works, this site is very
relevant.
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Regarding authority, it was determined that the
website author is not academically credentialed as an
expert on Poe, but he is definitely an enthusiast who has
significantly studied Poe and his works on his own.
Under accuracy, you can see some inconsistencies in
the presence of evidence and source citations, but those
things are present for some of the more important
features of the site, especially the critical essays in the
larger “Poe Decoder” site.
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The Purpose is clearly stated in the larger Poe
Decoder website, and it was determined that it is meant
to inform and provides unbiased objective facts.
Under Other observations I indicated that the
website has a very dated appearance. Having said that
though, it is not a deal breaker with respect to the quality
of the information in the website overall. The website
would, however, be more likely to receive more
attention with an updated appearance.
Overall, I concluded that the website passed the
CRAAP Test, especially when considered in connection
with the larger Poe Decoder site, which definitely has
excellent critical essays on some of Poe’s works.
And, as seen in the bonus evaluation demonstration of
the website that no longer exists, the Poe Decoder site is
extremely authoritative and accurate.