How to Evaluate the Information Sources You Find

Evaluating the authority, usefulness, and reliability of the information you find is a crucial step in the process of library research. The questions you ask about books, periodical articles, multimedia titles, or Web pages are similar whether you're looking at a citation to the item, a physical item in hand, or an electronic version on a computer.

ALL SOURCES:

Critically Analyzing Information Sources lists some of the questions you should ask when you consider the appropriateness of a particular book, article, media resource, or Web site for your research.

BOOKS:

Use book reviews to gather critical information about books. Three quick ways to access them online [Cornell users only]:

ProQuest Research Library. [1986- ; some full-text reviews]
Book Review Digest. [1983- ; excerpts from some reviews]
Bowker's Books in Print. [in-print books from any year; full-text of short reviews]

More sources for book reviews at Book Reviews: A Finding Guide.

PERIODICALS:

Distinguishing Scholarly from Non-Scholarly Periodicals: A Checklist of Criteria shows how to evaluate periodicals by looking at their format, intended audience, and appearance.
Download videos: identifying scholarly journals identifying news sources

WEB SITES: Evaluating Web Pages: Questions to Ask & Strategies for Getting the Answers is an excellent guide from UC Berkeley.
Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Sites is a brief table of tips and questions to ask.
For another approach, see Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools.

Return to Library Research: A Hypertext Guide

Revised 29 February 2008 [MOE]
Michael Engle
Reference Department

URL: http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/evaluate.html

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