Ministry of Agriculture and Lands

Trusting the Web: How to Evaluate Agricultural Information From the Internet

The World Wide Web can be a double edged sword for farm managers. One the one hand the Web offers managers a large quantity of timely and relevant information. One the other hand because placing pages and documents on the web is inexpensive, easy and unregulated there is a requirement for managers to evaluate the credibility and timeliness of the web information. The role of web researcher plus evaluator can be overwhelming for the farm manager. This factsheet presents a set of questions to assist the farm manager in the evaluation of agricultural information from the Internet.

What Type of Organization Developed the Website?

Each web address ...

starts with a file format identification (e.g., http://) to show it is a web page

has a middle section (e.g., cbc) containing the publisher or server name and a suffix section (e.g., .ca) indicating organization type.

You can use this address to determine the type of organization that developed the website. The suffix of the web address identifies the top level domain (TLD) of the organization. There are a limited number of such domains including:

gov or mil - Government or Military

edu - Educational

org - Organizations (nonprofit)

com - commercial business

ca - Canada

For example: http://hayexchange.com is a commercial site or http://attra.org is a non-profit organization site

Who is the Publisher of the Web Site?

As noted above the web address identifies the publisher or server name. The name is generally named in first portion of the web address (between http:// and the first /). For example, the publisher of http://microsoft.com is Microsoft as a commercial site. Other servers such as geocities.com or AOL.com indicate commercial web publishers. In some cases the address may have an additional name such as http://geocities~smith.com which indicates the page may be a personal page hosted on a web server. After identifying the publisher you will need to ask yourselves the following: Do you know and trust this publisher and their content or do you need to find out more about the organization?

Who is the Author and What are their Credentials?

Now that you have an idea of the organization type and publisher of the site, you can start reviewing the specifics of the organization or person. Look for an "About" or "Contact" link on the page to review the organization location and background. In some cases the specific author of the content is noted and one can often look at the title and background of the person to obtain an idea of their credentials. Use search engines to search for the author's name to determine what other research has been conducted.

Is it a Professional Web site?

Review the overall look of the web site. Is the look profession in terms of graphics, file formats, feedback, email contacts, navigation features, links, and organization? Is it easy to find information on the website? Are the objectives and organizational information easily accessible? Is it easy to identify the authority & credibility of authors? Is the information stable in that it has been at that location for a long time.

What is the Purpose of the Site?

The purpose of a web site often plays an important clue to the reliability and usefulness of the content of the web page. Is the site selling, educating, buying or advertising? These issues may create a bias in the information presented. If the site is commercial and trying to sell you a product, then it may be correct to view the articles regarding the product with skepticism. This bias may also be an issue when evaluating non-commercial sites representing specific viewpoints. Assess the sponsor, publisher & author of the site as noted in the previous questions then look through the site for links to other viewpoints. Be sure to get all sides of the picture and keep your critical thinking cap on at all times.

Dates & Updates: How Current is the Information?

The next step is to review how currentness and the applicability of the information. It can be very frustrating to review a market report & commentary only to find out is was relevant to the year 1988. However, note that content that deals with the basic principles of farm business management may be useful even though it is dated. To determine the timeliness & context of the information try to determine the date the research was conducted (e.g., Statistics Canada Census: 1986), publication date, "last updated or modified" date, file source information, or copyright.

How Easy is the Information to Verify?

The web site should clearly present research method, sources of material, related studies and links to allow easy verification of the web content. This verification of the web site is a way of determining if the content is based on fact, research or opinion.

These are the main questions to consider when evaluating agricultural information from the internet. For more information view the resources & related publications noted below:

Evaluating Web Pages: Teaching Library Internet Workshops, U of Calif., Berkeley

website

Practical Steps in Evaluating Internet Resources

website

Evaluating Quality on the Net by H. Tillman, Babson College, Massachusetts

website

Web Portals, Search Engines & Indexes

InfoBasket: British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Lands InfoBasket web portal.

Google www.google.ca

WebCrawler http://webcrawler.com/

AgFind http://www.agfind.com/

AgriSurf http://www.agrisurf.com