University of West Florida John C. Pace Library

Internet Tutorial

Objectives

• To learn some background information on the Internet.

• To identify characteristics of a reliable website.

• To identify domain indicators as part of a standard url.

• To locate homepages for industry trade associations.

What is the Internet?

• The Internet was first developed as a governmental project for military use.

• The Internet has grown into a vast source of information which is international and widely variable in scope.

• Because of the fluidity and accessibility of the Internet, it is important to have some tools to identify the reliability of the information, which often changes from day to day.

How to start?

• Web browsers are used to access the Internet.

• While there are others, Microsoft Internet Explorer is the most commonly recognized Internet browser.

Default Homepage

When I open my Internet Explorer, my default homepage is the UWF Homepage.

Address Bar

. what?

.com Commercial site

.edu Educational site

.gov Government site

.mil Military site

.net Network support

.org Organization site

Reliable Information?

• With so many different sources of information which can be found on the Internet, how do you determine whether the site you are viewing is reliable?

• There are a number of aspects of the site to examine for reliability. The domain may give you a first clue.

Reliable Website Characteristics

• Check the domain. Commercial and organizational sites may have an agenda or bias.

• Check for the last updated date. Is it recent?• Can you contact the webmaster?• If specific information is provided, is an author

listed?

Search Engines

• Search engines:– Google– Yahoo!– Alta Vista– Lycos

• Metasearch engines– Metacrawler– Dogpile – Hotbot

• Metasearch engines search multiple engines all at once.

To try some of these search engines, you can right click on the link and open in a new window.

Google

Google Results

Food Marketing Institute

Citation from Website

• This would be the correct form for citing the article:

Food Marketing Institute. (2010, January 27). FMI statement on President Obama’s State of the Union Address. Food Marketing Institute website. Retrieved February 12, 2005 from http://www.fmi.org/news_releases/index.cfm?fuseaction=mediatext&id=1105

• If the information for your article is different, check the APA Guide for more details.

Thank You

Thank you for viewing this tutorial. I hope that it will help you locate web information available on your topic.

Make sure that you take the practice quiz to receive full participation points.

2010 © Donna Fluharty