by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: April 23, 2009

How can you be sure you are getting factual material when you research? Karen G. Schneider, in "Beyond Algorithms: A Librarian's Guide to Finding Websites You can Trust" will help you decide. In she shares five important tips. Availability, authorship, credibility, external links and legality. Availability is self defining she tells us, it's either available or it isn't. She is director of Librarians' Internet Index

She elaborates further: We search and select one of the offerings only to find the information we seek is there but is further protected behind some conditional response. It may be a pay site, for subscribers only, or it may be only directional toward other sites that promise us what we seek. Her best answer to that is to first check out the already mentioned Librarians' Internet Index. All informational sites they recommend are free.

Okay, we move on to other sites. Are they creditable, she wants us to ask ourselves? Signs pointing us toward out are: Opinions rather than facts, outdated material, and the author not qualified to write on the topic. How do we learn about the author and their credentials? MS Schneider suggests we look for an About Us feature and check it out. Soon, after trial and error we learn instinctively whether to read on or whether to move to another search engine selection to continue our research.

Links are an important clue as to how well the site is being maintained. All sites are susceptible to broken links but many of them tell us something is amiss. She asks us to tell them if their sites have broken links, and those that are careful with their information usually ask for this information from searchers.

Is the material on this site legal? How did they arrive at the conclusions and do they show where their facts originated. Do they distinguish between opinions of their own or disclaimers of the material they permit being of their own opinions and readers and are not to be taken as originating with the primary source.

As examples of what I have just written, all ideas up to this now point toward the author librarian. Reading what she wrote prompted this article. How could I not credit her with the inspiration? With a clear conscience I could not. I could have taken the five tips and credited her with them and then taken off on my own. Why didn't I? I am not a librarian, I am only a writer in need of the information she writes about. My first intention was to learn how to more effectively research; my second opinion was to share it with my Helium friends. We are all learners there in this beloved craft of writing and we all welcome tips from such professionals as MS. Schneider is.

I know of course we all learn from other and every expert's words did not originate from them but they took what they learned form others and either refined it, added to it, redefined it, explained it, or made it more accessible. They cannot be expected to give proof where every idea they write about came from. They don't know, not having kept records. A competent writer, therefore, only does this when specific directions, advice, facts are presented comes directly from research and they consciously withhold knowledge of its origin.

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