II. Know your URL.

So you are surfing the 'net looking for good information for your research paper.  How do you determine whether a site is an acceptable academic resource?

Well, the very first thing you can do is look at the address, the URL.  yUsually, just seeing the address (URL) of a site will tell you several important things -- this can help you quickly decide whether a site is worth your time as an academic research source, or whether you should keep looking.

We're all pretty familiar with the basic url these days: http://www.sjsu.edu

So generally, the middle word of the URL is most important, telling you the origin or location of the site.  Things like

http://www.chevrolet.com

or http://www.princeton.edu

http://www.latimes.com

http://www.tonka.com

But there are also variations to this basic address, such as

http://as.sjsu.edu/ 

    The as in the address means that part of the SJSU server is divided to give AS its own section - in this case, the Associated Students. 

So any address that begin this way is in turn a subsection of the AS:

http://as.sjsu.edu/ascr/     is the AS Campus Recreation section

http://as.sjsu.edu/asts/    is the AS Transportation Solutions section

Got it?

So what would this URL mean?

http://sjsu6.blackboard.com/

It's the server at blackboard.com

and part of their server is a section for SJSU  -  sjsu6.blackboard.com

But another important aspect of the URL is the suffix, the ending.

When you do a general search on a topic, just browsing the list of URLS and paying attention to the .endings can help you quickly narrow down your list....  How?

Let's start with .com -
      What does .com stand for?

Comics?  Comedy?  Commerce?  Close!

.com stands for commercial

And commercials exist to sell things, to sell stuff, whether specific products or advertising or whatever.....

Is ford.com going to be an unbiased academic source about vehicles?  Or is it going to direct you, obviously or subtly, toward a particular brand, product, or answer?

Is that relevant for academic research?  Definitely not. 

So for the most part, stay away from .com URLS when you are doing academic research.  There are always exceptions, but when you're starting out, just skip the .com and look to other sources first. 

One more caveat:  the "avoid .com" rule applies especially to bogus research sites like "about.com" "infoplease.com" and other student research sites.  These might provide some general info, but they are basically pre-chewed information (baby food?) rather than original research.  They just don't cut it for college-level work. 

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