1. Determining the Authority of Sources With the large amount of information available today, determining if a source is valid is difficult. Just because it is published on the web or in a magazine does not mean the information is valid. Not all information sources are equal.

2. Determining Authority and Validity of Web Pages How do you know that the information you found online is valid?

3. Evaluating Magazines

4. There are different kinds of magazines. Popular magazines : ·Newsweek ·Business week ·Popular Mechanics Scholarly journals such as Oxford English Journal Information Management Journal ABA Journal Scholarly journals are more authoritative and because the material is written for a specific professional audience. They often provide the best sources. Magazines and Journals

5. Popular Magazines

6. Scholarly Journals

7. Which Source is Best? What kind of information do you need? Background material Information for your paper News Definition of a term Opinions on a topic Scholarly articles

8. What is Your Topic? local or regional? popular in the current news ? something that has been discussed for a while? How much information is available on your topic? scientific or medical? Are there legal aspects of your topic?

9. Additional Considerations If your topic is new within the last few months, you may not be able to find scholarly articles on it. If it is very popular, the amount of information may be overwhelming. Where can you find the best information available on your topic?

10. How do you determine if an article is biased?

11. There are several factors that may indicate a bias.

12. Ask yourself the following questions to determine bias.

13. •With what political, social or religious group does the author identify ?•

14. Does the writer have anything personally to gain from the message?

15. Is the writer selling or otherwise promoting something?

16. What sources does the author use? Are they credible? What about their statistics? Are they credible?

17. •Does the author mention more than one point of view of the issue? •Does he or she respectfully acknowledge opposing opinions?

18. Although nearly everything has a little bias, avoiding anything that is heavily slanted as noted in the previous questions is important.

19. Use common senseAuthorDateAuthor’s backgroundSourcesBias