ENG 151: Information Literacy - Source Evaluation

What Kind of Information Do You Have?

Knowing more about your information can help you evaluate it properly. Start by identifying its format and then the source type.

Both the information format and source type can tell you more about:

• How the information was created.
• Its intended audience.
• What kind of review and publication process it went through.

Format

Format refers to how information is packaged: is it in from a journal? A book? A government document? A blog? A court case? An encyclopedia?

Source Type

Source refers to the specific piece of information, like a specific video on YouTube or an article in a journal.

There is a range of source types that reflects their intended audience; purpose; appearance; and length of their creation, review, and publication processes.

Popular Sources:

• Content created and published quickly
• Some review, maybe none
• May or may not cite sources
• Written by anyone
• Audience is the general public
• Appearance is colorful, contains images, and may contain ads
• Purpose is to inform, entertain, discuss current events, share opinions, sell a product, monetize content

Scholarly Sources:

• Content is created after considerable research done by experts
• Content is reviewed extensively by other experts
• Written by experts in that research area
• Audience is other researchers or scholars
• Appearance is plain, starts with an abstract, and contains a lengthy list of references at the end
• Purpose is to share findings from original research

Other Sources:

Academic information retrieved from books, primary sources, government documents, statistics, etc. These kinds of sources are reviewed more thoroughly and take longer to be published than a popular source, but have not gone through the official peer review process.