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The way we judge the information we come across on the Internet is a central matter if we want our search to be effective and accurate at the same time. For studying purposes (but not only) many of us need to get a lot of information we don't know and I myself do a lot of searches on the Web. The question is: are these pieces of information all reliable? Is there anything that can be a trap and so we'd better avoid?
On the Internet we can find almost everything we want but the difficulty is how to find the right things. In order to make it more clear as possible I'm going to make a list of what I think are the criteria of making a good search:
1) Use of a good search engine: there are many search engines but not all of them are reliable. I think google is a good one.
2) Advanced search: don't limit your search to what you come across at first; better making an advanced search so we can delimit the area of interest to us and filter the overload of information on the Internet .
3) Social bookmarking's websites: use websites of social bookmarking as del.icio.us; they give us the possibility to check if a website is useful or not according to what other people said and to the number of persons who saved it.
4) Author: always look the author of the website and check if it is compatibile with your search .
5) Comments: have a look to what the other peers said about the website. I personally think it is worthy to do that but I wouldn't trust it 100%.
6) File format and domins : specify the file format and domins you'd like in your results and search only a specific website, or exclude that site from your search
7) Use advanced operators : click on this link to see which are the most common operators.
This are just few points that came up into my mind. I read the suggestions other universities make for students and I totally agree with them. However, in my opinion, the level of accuracy of a search depends on what we are looking for. I mean, if you follow all these suggestions you will spend a lot of time; maybe it is not the case if you are looking for something which is not so important. On the other hand if you are looking for information that can be useful for your theses (for example) than it is worthy to spend 20 minutes more but have the certainty that what you came across is reliable.
I'm looking forward to reading which criteria you usually follow.
CU
3 commenti:
Hi elisa,
I read your post and agree with you especially when you say that using social bookmarking is a further possibility to check if what we found is reliable or not. It is also important, as you said to use a good search engine; there are a lot but I use google most of the time!
In my opinion it is also important to look at the domain of the site because it gives you the origin of the material you found and you can soon verify its reliability,
Have a nice week-end
see you on Monday,
elena
Hi Elisa!
How are you? I’m fine here;)
I totally agree with what you’ve pointed out on your post. I must say that I’ve always used Google as search engine and so I wouldn’t be able to compare it with other ones. I think Google is the most popular and this probably means it is really good. Anyway, we’ve recently experienced del.icio.us and I think, like you, it is really a good way to filter information on the Net. We know that in del.cio.us we can find websites that someone has already evalutated someway as worthvisiting.
See you online!
Selena:)
Hi Elisa,
interesting post... :)
we had the same idea about the use of social bookmarking which can be useful to confirm the reliability of a site as also Elena said
and of course the use of a good search engine is another important point that we both pointed out.
Moreover, You put in your post different important suggestions to follow in order to find the right information in the safer way possible and I found interesting, for example, to read other people's comments about the site.
Thanks and see you,
Imma
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