Why Evaluate Sources?
We need to evaluate any information before we believe it or use it in our everyday lives or academic research.
A source is where you get your information. It could be an Internet website, newspaper article, news broadcast, magazine article, journal article, book, speech, or someone's statement on social media. It is always important to evaluate a source. Evaluating a source means checking the source to make sure it is credible and reliable. This means the sources you use should not make any false claims, should be written by someone who knows what they’re talking about, and should contain information that relates directly to your topic of interest or research.
You might be asking: "Why should I evaluate a source that I found using library resources? I thought books purchased by the librarians were automatically okay?"
And those are great questions! However, even good, credible sources might not be the best choices for your exact research needs. Every time you research for a different assignment, you will have different research needs--in some cases you may need reliable websites while in others you will need scholarly journal articles, and your topic will be different than the last time you researched. This means that you need to evaluate whether the sources you find are good for your exact purposes as you are researching.
