2.  So next is .edu , which stands for ...  education!

An .edu ending is pretty much the opposite of a .com.  A website at another college or university would definitely meet academic standards, and would be a helpful academic resource for your work.A university website is almost a great source, says the Professor

    http://www.sjsu.edu

    http://www.stanford.edu

The .edu website should always be one of the first places you go...

3. The .gov website - Government

Nobody disagrees with the government, right? ;-)

Well, aside from that, the government websites offer a wealth of data and information, places like:

http://www.census.gov - The Census Bureau

http://www.dol.gov - The Department of Labor

http://www.ca.gov - California State Government

.gov and .edu sites are not always "peer-reviewed" but they are carefully controlled --only accredited educational institutions can obtain an .edu address, and the same goes for government.  They are absolutely solid as research sources for your academic papers and work.

 

4. .org - Organizations

Here's where things get tricky.  The .org ending is not controlled like .edu and .gov, but it's not always about commercial stuff either.  Org is for organization, and organizations can be very different - political, religious, nonprofit, social, cultural, etc.  So the academic value depends on the nature of the organization itself. yin and yang

So http://www.nra.org - would that be helpful as a peer-reviewed academic resource?  (National Rifle Association)

Nope, 'fraid not. If you want impartial things like statistics on gun ownership, you don't go to a site that strongly advocates for a particular political position.  You should probably go to a government site or an independent research institute for statistics on gun ownership.

BUT even if the site isn't good for basic objective research data, it is definitely still helpful if you're looking for political arguments against gun control, right? 

nope, he has nothing to do with the content, but I just thought he was cute

Okay, so how about http://glide.org ?

     Nope.  It's a great site, but it's a religious organization that is very clear about its religious mission.  Look elsewhere for academic data, although again, if you're looking for examples of socially active religious groups, this site would still be helpful.


 

 

 

 

 

5.  Network

The last suffix we'll mention is .net which was originally only for commercial providers, but now gets used by all kinds of folks.  The .net should be treated basically like an .org address - consider the organization/network itself as you evaluate its perspective. 

Okay, we'll come back to evaluating sites in the next section.

   http://www.earthlink.net

   http://www.php.net ...

Finally, there are many newer, less common, suffixes as well that you just have to use your judgement on.  : .tv .info .biz .us .ws .tv as well as country URLS: .uk (United Kingsom) .mx (mexico) .my .cn .ru .it etc….

 

 

 

 

So remember - look first for .edu or .gov addresses, ignore .com addresses, and weed carefully through .org and .net.  Again, there are always exceptions, but these are some good guidelines for beginning scholars.

 

D. So what do we know about these addresses, based on their endings?   Are these helpful academic sites? (Use your mouse to highlight underneath each URL to see the answer)

http://www.madd.org ?

Nope. Again, this is a great group, but they exist specifically to advocate politically, so you don'tI love Homer want to use them for statistics on drunk driving....you're much better off with an impartial government source.

http://www.krispykreme.com ?

Nope.  Ignore .com.  Unless you're hungry.

 

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Greekculture.html

Nope.  I just made this one up.  It sounds like it might have academic content, right?  But IT'S A .COM SO IGNORE IT!  Don't be fooled by official-sounding URLS!

 

Okay, so now that we've talked about the significance of different parts of the URL, it's time to get to the meat of the matter.  When evaluating any website, even educational, but especially org and net, there are several elements you want to look for.....

So get to it already