For Web sites put up by computers in the United States, the last three letters
of the first section of the web address (URL) can say a lot about the authors
of the page.
| .edu
|
- Sponsored by educational institutions, usually colleges. Sometimes
that can be a good sign that a site will contain scholarly information.
- Official departmental sites are more often reliable than personal
Web pages.
- Personal Web pages are often identifiable by a tilde (~) in the address.
This is not uniformly true, but it is often the case.
- Individual people may put papers and scholarly information on the
Web, but be sure to check for other signs of scholarship (like footnotes
and bibliographies).
|
| .gov
|
- Owned by the United States Federal Government.
- Most government sites exist to provide the same information they
normally make available in pamphlets and other publications.
- These sites should be reliable, and their information will usually
be considered acceptable in scholarly papers.
|
| .org
|
- Owned by an organization (not necessarily non-profit). These can be good
sources of information, but remember that they usually have some kind of
agenda.
- The Web site will support the sponsoring organization's mission, so
while the information may be valid, don't take it at face value.
|
| .com
|
- This designates commercial Web sites. They are maintained by companies
who are on the Web to represent their business interests.
- This information may be reliable, but it isn't necessarily scholarly.
- For example, Ben and Jerry's (the
ice cream company) puts up a site explaining how they feel about the
use of milk from cows raised on Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH). Ben and
Jerry are experts on ice cream and on their own company policy, but
they aren't experts on BGH. Their BGH information may be accurate,
but it isn't scholarly. Be careful of that important distinction. Not
all accurate information is scholarly.
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