Why Evaluate Your Sources?
When you use some of the techniques and sources from the prior lessons you are likely to find a wealth of information about your topic. Your challenge will be to go through this information and determine what might be appropriate. If you find information in books, magazines, newspapers, television, friends, or off the internet it will be your job to judge the quality of that information.
You might want to consider these points when evaluating
your information:
Let’s look at examples of some books and magazine or journal articles and try to evaluate them for some of the above factors.
Remember, we will be looking at these titles to determine the time period covered, the authority or reputation of the author or publisher, the purpose or subject focus of the item, and the quality of the documentation supporting its arguments.
You want to be sure that the books or articles you evaluate meet your research needs. A list of books and articles on a topic may be great for one research need, but poor for another one.