Toolbox Tips - Winter 1998

This Toolbox Tips article is also published in the print edition of the AALT Technician journal, January 1999. For further information about the AALT journal, please contact the Alberta Association of Library Technicians (AALT).

Sources for Web Site Evaluation

In our last segment of Toolbox Tips we discussed how evaluating web sites should be a basic skill of all Internet users, that libraries should be providing assistance to ensure their users have these skills, and how the creation of link libraries should be done not only using evaluation skills but also with your collection development policy in mind. Evaluation of all those web sites is quite a tall order for library staff however as the number of sites increases exponentially each day, so this installment of Toolbox Tips will look at some evaluation services that can help. Some of these services are in print, some are from the web, and others are known as evaluation communities.

Looking to Traditional Resources
Libraries use a number of standard sources for evaluation of print materials. Of these resources, journals have been considered the best place to find current reviews and these same journals can now be looked to for fairly current evaluations of web sites. Some of the more commonly used of these resources include Library Journal, Choice, School Library Journal, Multimedia Schools, and Classroom Connect. All of these include web site reviews as a standard section within each issue and you can be confident that their evaluations are trustworthy. There are also professional journals specific to every field that provide web site reviews pertinent to that field (law, oil and gas, psychology, health, music, etc.) and although they may not have been done by library professionals, they are often a great place to start. Almost every journal now printed includes a section dedicated to the evaluation of web sites; a reminder that it is still good practice to look to traditional resources for reviews of the web.

Looking to the Web
The Web itself is also loaded with reviews, but it is less organized and some sources are questionable at best. There are specific newsgroups and mailing lists for libraries and library staff that discuss various sites and library issues that may be of assistance. To find some of these, Tile <www.tile.net> provides a specialized search engine that allows you to search for newsgroups and mailing lists by topic. Electronic newsletters can be a good source of evaluated sites, and many of the traditional print sources are now becoming available online. Internet Reviews from College and Research Libraries News <www.ala.org/acrl/c&rlnew2.html> [note: an index of these are are archived at http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ACRL/Publications/College_and_Research_Libraries_News/Internet_Resources.htm, 2003] and Web Watch from Library Journal <www.bookwire.com/ljdigital/> [note: now located on the Library Journal Web Site: http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com, 2003] are examples of items that have migrated from print to electronic format and are great resources for reviews. The new E-Connection site <http://www.hwwilson.com/econnection/econnect.htm> due for release this year also holds promise of quality reviews by librarians [note: no longer active, 2003].

There are also web sites whose mandate is to provide listings of evaluated sites. For instance, Schoolnet <www.schoolnet.ca>, Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators <discoveryschool.com/schrockguide/>, Classroom Connect <www.classroom.net>, and the Telus 2Learn site <www.2learn.ca>, all provide evaluated links to educational sites. Web Sites of professional organizations often provide links to other sites that they have evaluated as being appropriate for their members. Look at other major library sites (the Internet Public Library <www.ipl.org> is a classic example) and check what they have gathered into their link library. These sites are not only categorized, but have been fully evaluated by librarians prior to being added to the collection. There are also generalized collections that are organized topically such as Yahoo, Lycos and Magellan, but the rating systems applied are not necessarily the criteria appropriate for libraries. If you can find the criterion at all, you will find that they do bear some similarities, but use these sources with caution and consider them a jumping off point rather than a trusted resource.

Evaluation Communities - an idea in experimentation
Evaluation Communities have been, and continue to be, under development by a number of organizations. Some communities are composed of members from the general population of Internet users, while others may be specialized communities. The specialized communities draw members from particular segments the population and they rate sites on criteria specific to their community. The Infofilter project <www.usc.edu/users/help/flick/Infofilter/index.html> was an example of an evaluation community that was a)composed entirely of members from the library community, and b)had the goal of evaluating web sites using library criteria. Although the idea was great, the reality of evaluating the Web is an enormous task - one the Infofilter project soon acknowledged. The project came to a close in July 1997.

There are still commercial services trying to fill the gap however. The most common and widely available of these include filtered search engines. The commercial services behind these engines have staff who are paid to evaluate web sites for the service. We'll look at these and other evaluation communities more closely in our next installment of Toolbox Tips.

As you can see, there are many resources available to assist you with finding evaluated web sites to add to your link library. Although the task of finding and evaluating sites seems daunting at first, it is simply an extension of collection development applied to a different medium. Although you may have occasion to tackle the job of being the first to evaluate a particular resource, that doesn't have to be the case every time. Take advantage of evaluations that have already been done, gather some trusted services you can look to for assistance, apply your local collection development policy, and you can quickly build link libraries that are high quality, virtual information centres for your patrons.

*For discussions and explanations of Evaluation Criteria, visit the Toolbox Resource Kit on the Inet-Toolbox web site.

Cynthia Beuselinck is the co-owner of Inet-Toolbox, an Internet training and consulting company based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Questions and comments for Toolbox Tips can be directed to Inet-Toolbox at toolboxinet-toolbox.com.