Now that the simple indicators for information quality are no longer valid, students must employ more sophisticated strategies to determine the authenticity of information presented via electronic media. (a personal vignette)

Librarians are rapidly developing resource tools to guide students through the process of information evaluation. Some useful resource sites include:

Information evaluation is a task that is very consistent with the goals of a liberal education -- particularly its emphasis on teaching students to think independently.

Evaluating information quality involves several elements:

• Critical reading:

An online text may be beautifully composed with a professional layout and smooth prose yet be filled with factual inaccuracies, lies, and incorrect conclusions. Students must develop the skills to identify these errors by careful comparison of the information presented against that available from other sources and from one's prior knowledge and exprience.

• The illusion of conclusiveness:

A student might conduct an online search and retrieve dozens of relevant resources, and in the end conclude that he or she has done a thorough review of the relevant literature. In reality, a slight change in search terms would have revealed a far richer collection of scholarship, and the online search implicitly excludes the wealth of older research that was published in the years prior to online indexing.

Finding large numbers of online pages does not automatically indicate
that one has thoroughly researched the available literature.

• The illusion of comprehension

Reading a web page is often like joining the middle of a conversation. The participant must both comprehend the points being made and infer the background context leading up to this work. It is often easy to think that one understands the material presented while being oblivious of the underlying issues and history. (an example)

• Information authority:

Traditional publication methods typically assured that the document has been written by a generally-recognized expert in that discipline. Quite simply, the reader can reasonably assume that a reputable publisher will not distribute a book written by a teenager with no prior knowlege or experience in that discipline. The web lacks all such editorial restrictions, leaving the reader with the responsibility to determine whether or not this author is a trustworthy authority on this particular topic.