Over recent decades, consolidation has been a consistent theme in mass media and other types of information providers, with the emergence of large information empires which continuously acquire new subsidiaries. This conglomeration is a challenge to LIS because the values of these companies are directly contrary to many of the core values of librarianship. First, […]
Evaluating Sources
How Do You Evaluate the Blogs and Websites You Visit?
If you’ve been in school in the last decade or so, you were probably given a handout at some point explaining how to evaluate internet sources. These documents usually give a list of criteria to inspect on a website so you can determine whether it is authoritative and reliable. I remember being told to investigate […]
Google’s Content Farm Algorithm Update: Can a Computer Judge “Quality?”
Google recently made a major change in its algorithms in order to improve the quality of search results. It affects about 12% of searches, making it much more significant than its frequent smaller tweaks. It’s a timely development for people who are claiming that Google is losing the war against spam. Google’s Amit Singhal and […]
Why Blogs are Peer Reviewed Sources
In academia, peer review is the process that is supposed to separate the trustworthy from the unreliable, the conclusive from the flawed, the groundbreaking from the mundane. Before a work can be published, a rigorous review by a carefully selected group of scholars in the same field is necessary in order to ensure a high […]
When Online Tutorials Hurt Rather Than Help
With blogs on every conceivable topic, countless online forums and major “how-to” websites, we now have great ways to share free tutorials that can teach people practically anything. Technology-related information is especially helpful: with a simple Google search you can learn how to use any software program, learn about mobile reading or how to start […]