Library and Academic Services: Evaluate Websites and Online Resources: More about website evaluation

Wikipedia

Using Wikipedia

First - Ask your instructor if you can use Wikipedia as a source in an assignment and make sure to cite it if you do.
Even Wikipedia’s own section on academic research states it’s the place to get started and get a general understanding of your topic. Topics will need more details and that’s where books, ebooks, and peer review articles at the library can help.
The bottom of the Wikipedia entry contains the sources used to write the article. It gives a good idea about the quality of the information in the article itself and ideas for other sources to search at the library. It's always better to use this reference list to find more reliable information than to use the wiki article itself.
The Wikipedia Library has a section on Finding Your Source put together by colleges, universities, and libraries to make sure it helps your research and helps determine quality, and authoritative, sources.
More about using Wikipedia from Scribbr.

Evaluating Wikipedia: Tracing the evolution and evaluating the quality of the articles
Evaluating Wikipedia article quality is a reference guide with specific steps you can take to get the most out of Wikipedia, as well as a look at how its quality system works.

Blogs & Podcasts

Blogs aren't your typical webpages and have special consideration when considering them as credible sources. Here are some links to more about using (or not using) blogs in your research.

Reasons why a blog is generally not considered to be a credible source
In general, blogs should not be considered a reliable scholarly source. While some of them are written by real experts and can be great sources for some topics, many are strongly opinionated and can lack the professionalism expected in a scholarly source.
Cosenza, S. (2015). Credibility in the blogosphere: A study of measurement and influence of wine blogs as an information source. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 14(2), 71–91.
Information is at the heart of decision making, and blogs offer a plethora. A positive evaluation of credibility (believability) will ultimately determine its usability for decision making. Using centered resonance analysis of wine blog writers and readers focus group data, this study attempts to address the full range of blog characteristics (subsequent scale items) that can be evaluated for credibility, anchoring them to the relevant research streams of media, website, and word of mouth.
Evaluating Web Resources: Evaluating Blogs
This guide helps with assessing websites, blogs and other online tools.
Blog Evaluation Assessment
This web-based article is focused to educators but there is a great deal of useful information on how to evaluate a blog here. Worth the read.
Austria, J.L. (2007) Developing evaluation criteria for podcasts. Libri, 57, 179-207
Most information out there talks about how or why you should create a podcast. This paper details criteria you can use to evaluate a podcast, and in turn, determine if it's a reliable source.

Online resources

Here is a list of some really great online articles and more information on what to consider when evaluating web sites and web pages.

Evaluating Digital Sources (Purdue OWL)
Because so much information is now available online, it’s important to know how to navigate digital sources versus print sources. Today, almost every print source has a digital edition (e.g., ebooks, online newspapers), and some academic journals only publish digitally. However, despite the many credible digital sources available today, there are still many unreliable sources available on the internet....
What is a Credible Source? How to Evaluate Web Resources
With so much content and so little oversite, determining which information is reliable can be a daunting task. But failing to do so could leave you looking foolish or worse. Thankfully, there are some easy steps you can take to evaluate the credibility of a website.
How to Tell if a Website is Credible
When you read, you should make sure that what you are reading comes from a credible source. Credible sources are trustworthy, meaning you know that what you are reading is true. Here's how to assess if what you are reading is credible.

Make a recommendation

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