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Faculty Checklist for Evaluating Information

Note to faculty:

This checklist is designed to assist you as you develop course syllabi. You may want to establish criteria to guide students as they search for information to complete your assignments. The actual text of the criteria will vary with the level of the course, the field of study, and the specific learning objectives. Clear, explicit criteria will assure better student research, and will enable librarians to help your students more effectively.

For web-based examples of these issues, see Evaluating Web Sites.

Types of Publications

Any combination of these sources may be appropriate for your particular assignment. All of these resources are now available in print, through library databases, or via the World Wide Web.

• Scholarly or peer-reviewed journals
• Edited or authored books
• Primary sources
  • first-person accounts
  • interviews
• Original research
  • case studies
  • surveys
  • controlled studies
• Academic journals, monographs, handbooks and encyclopedias
  • provide background information
  • digest or synthesize research
• Newspapers
  • Provide statistics
  • Legal and governmental information
  • Insight into community-based issues and opinions
  • News on current or controversial issues not yet discussed in the journal literature

Author's Credentials

Credentials vary by field of study and depth of student research.

• Required degree, certification, or licensure
• Affiliation with associations or institutions

Currency

The most current literature may not reflect ongoing trends and long-range perspectives.

• Published within past ____?____ years
• When is historical information relevant or important?
• Help students understand the lag time between gathering data and publishing newspapers, journals, and books.

Perspective

Students often need help in detecting and evaluating bias. They need strategies for finding diverse perspectives, such as identifying organizations.

• Author's personal agenda
• Agenda of sponsoring organization
• Bias in research design
• Suggestions for obtaining diverse perspectives.

Internet Resources

Internet Resources are especially hard to evaluate. For more information, go to Evaluating Web Sites at http://www.lesley.edu/library/guides/research/evaluating_web.html.

• Distinction between library databases delivered via the web and other web sites
• Date of content as well as date of web page
• Author's identity and credentials are often hard to find
• Bias may be invisible to student.
• In spite of the difficulties, the Web contains rich resources, including research articles, diverse perspectives, and data sets.

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