Finding quality Web sites

The Web is a resource so vast that finding what you're looking for can seem akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. And the Web continues to grow daily, not only in volume, but in diversity. The Web is not "for" any one thing anymore: you can use it for purposes as diverse as sending a greeting card to submitting a hospital preadmission questionnaire. Part of developing content for your site is locating Web resources that are relevant to your course and gathering the information you'll need to make them available from your course Web site.

Many instructors assign Web sites as either primary texts or supplementary readings. The most convenient way to point students at online resources is to create a Web page with links to the sites. In fact, many course sites start out as lists of pointers to other online resources.

Using Web sites in the curriculum raises a number of concerns. One worry is that you will adopt a Web site as a primary reading only to discover that the site has moved or changed. Another concern is the accuracy and authenticity of Web-based content. But with the glut of information on the Web, perhaps the biggest concern is how an instructor can separate the wheat from the chaff and find good, accurate, dependable sites for use in the classroom.

Finding Web content

As the Web continues to burgeon with each passing day, it becomes harder and harder to find the "right" Web sites. A basic Web search can yield millions of matching Web pages. Looking for relevant content in a long list of links can feel a bit like shopping at a flea market: you may find what you're looking for, but not without picking through a lot of junk. When following up on search results, you may find that many links are broken (point to nonexistent pages) or unrelated (a search for "renaissance music" returns links to pages about the rock band Renaissance) and that most of the links that are related are insubstantial, poorly executed, or otherwise unreliable. But the "right" sites are out there. You just need to know where, and how, to find them.

Search engines

The premise of a search engine is similar to that of a library catalog: to list the pages on the Web so that users can find them. The principal difference is that in a library, cataloging is done by humans, whereas on the Web most search engine catalogs are created by software robots that roam the Internet looking for new or updated pages. The trouble with robots is that they cannot make fine distinctions between, for example, Jefferson, the president, and Jefferson, Texas. Another significant difference is that libraries tend to have most of their holdings cataloged, whereas no search engine has indexed more than a quarter of the Web. In spite of these limitations, search engines still provide the most extensive catalog of Web holdings.

Subject directories

Using a subject directory is more like consulting a librarian than using the library catalog. With a general notion about the topic you are researching, a librarian can suggest possible options or send you to the appropriate area in the library to browse the shelves. Subject directories are compiled by Web librarians who collect, review, and index Web sites into categories. A subject directory is most useful when you want a broad survey of a subject, for example, celestial navigation or transcendentalism. Because humans, not robots, compile subject directories, they tend to have a much smaller catalog than a search engine, with information that is not as current.

Searching smart

Every search engine has a variety of methods for refining searches. Although many methods are used broadly, search engines are not standardized, so a command that works with one may not work in the same way with another. You may find that some of the commands listed below don't work exactly as shown with your favorite search engine. Don't despair: check the search engine's help pages. Just because the command doesn't work as shown does not mean that the method isn't available - it may just be implemented differently.

When you type a string of words into a search field, most search engines look for pages that match any of your search terms. For example, if you enter "renaissance music" into a search field, the result will contain sites that contain the words "renaissance" or "music." Of the millions of sites listed as the result of this query, only a small number will relate to music from the Renaissance period.

You can use simple operators to formulate more precise search queries. Use the "+" operator to find pages that have all the words you type in your search. The following search locates pages that mention "renaissance" and "music."

+renaissance +music

Use the "-" operator to exclude particular subjects. The following search locates pages that mention "renaissance" and "music" but excludes pages from that set that mention "baroque."

+renaissance +music -baroque

These methods locate words, not concepts. You may get a result that contains the words "music" and "renaissance" somewhere on the page but is actually about the Harlem Renaissance.

To narrow in on a topic, try a phrase search using quotation marks. When you enclose your search words in quotation marks, pages that have all the words in the order specified are returned. A phrase search on "renaissance music" is more likely than a search with operators to locate pages about Renaissance music. You can combine operators with phrase searching for greater precision. The following search will locate pages that deal specifically with music from the Renaissance period by matching the phrase "renaissance music" and excluding those pages that mention "medieval" or "baroque."

"renaissance music" -medieval -baroque

Because a document title is normally a good descriptor of page content, you can sometimes home in on a subject using a title search, which searches for words or phrases that appear in the document title. The search "title:renaissance music" returns pages that have either renaissance or music in the <TITLE> tag. You can also combine phrase searching with title searching. The following search returns pages with the phrase "renaissance music" in the title.

title:"renaissance music"

Another useful method for refining your results is to search for pages within specific domains. For example, you can search for pages at educational institutions by limiting your search to domains that end in ".edu."

"renaissance music" +host:edu

You can also limit your search to specific sites. The following search query looks for pages on Renaissance music only on the Medieval.org Web site.

host: medieval.org "renaissance music"

Evaluating Web content

Too often it is hard to determine who authored a Web site, never mind his or her credentials. But with the free-for-all that is the Web - with sites authored by everyone from grade-school children to movie fans to political organizations to extremist groups to Nobel laureates - and with no governing body to ensure quality or accuracy, users need to turn their critical evaluation skills to Web site content.

One of the hardest aspects of evaluating Web sites is the lack of standardization. In print, we can normally find information about the provenance of a document - the author's name, information about the publication, usually something about the author's qualifications. On the Web, nothing is required. There is no standard way to indicate a document's origins, so the information is often omitted. Also, many of the visual cues we get from printed materials are not on the Web. The typography and quality of the printing and paper for a scholarly journal, for example, instills more confidence than that of the daily rag. By contrast, Web documents of the utmost reliability may be poorly designed and executed. Without proven evaluative systems, you will need to devise your own methods for selecting quality Web sites.

Here are some things to look for when evaluating Web sites:

Origins. Where is the site from? Is it from a source you trust, such as the New York Times? Is it from an educational or government organization (that is, sites that end in .edu or .gov, such as www.nasa.gov or www.yale.edu)? Or is it impossible to tell from the page where it comes from and who the author is? If there is no indication on the site of authorship or affiliation but you feel that the materials are credible and useful, you may wish to do a bit of sleuthing to determine its origins, such as searching the domain name registry to find out who owns the site's domain.
Freshness. How recently were the materials published? Well-designed sites include a publication date (the date the materials were first written), as well as a last-updated date. Web pages have a short shelf life. Beware of pages that have been untouched for more than a few months.
Bias. Many informational Web pages are sponsored by organizations that are trying to sell something. For example, you may find a page about migraine headaches on a pharmaceutical company's Web site. This association does not necessarily render the materials useless, but it is wise to regard them with some skepticism. Also be wary of sites from not-for-profit organizations (for example, www.freecannabis.org): because their mission is to promote a point of view, the information they offer may not be objective.
Popularity. One way to get endorsement for a Web site is to see who else likes it. You can use link searching to check a site's popularity by seeing who links to it from their pages. For example, in AltaVista, typing "link:www.dartmouth.edu/~compose" will show the sites that link to Dartmouth College's Composition Center home page. If only a few sites link to the materials, and they are mainly personal pages, you might consider looking for an alternate source. If, however, you get many search results and you recognize some listings (perhaps the English department site at your institution), then you have some assurance that the materials are of high quality.

Using Web content

The greatest mishap you may encounter when using materials from the Web is that the site might not be there when you need it. For example, you may have assigned your students to read online documents supporting a copyright case, but when the assignment comes due, the site where the documents reside is down for maintenance. Unfortunately, broken links are all too common on the Web: in a typical online session, you are likely to encounter at least one broken link. This fly-by-night aspect of Web sites can be unsettling, particularly when one is designing a course around materials from the Web.

Here are a few steps you can take to keep from being left in the lurch:

Choose wisely. It is best to choose sites from established organizations, like sites from government or educational institutions (see Evaluating Web content, above).
Contact the author. Send a message to the site author explaining that you intend to use the site as a primary text in your class. Ask whether the author has any major plans for the site - any extensive site redesign or relocation - that might affect its availability during the time you'll need it.
Download the site. Perhaps the best way to ensure a site's availability is to download and install it on your own Web server. Some authors offer their Web sites for mirroring, which means you can download the site and install it locally on your institution's Web server for more convenient access. Then you point to the local site when you create a link to the materials on your course site.

It is possible to download a site directly from the Web browser without following a formal procedure: Microsoft's Internet Explorer, for example, has a "Save As...Web Archive" feature that allows you to save a site with accompanying images and media to your hard drive. But you should not mirror any site on your own server without first seeking permission from the site author. If you download a site without permission, you are violating copyright (see Copyright and Web Teaching).
Have an alternate. Whenever possible, have a backup source for Web-based materials. In the copyright example above, an alternative could be a print source for the documents or printing the Web pages and asking the library to hold them on reserve. This strategy is useful both in case the site is ever unavailable and for students who cannot access the materials online.

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