Group5 Pg570-580

Evaluating a Web Site

1.) The URL- http://ncsl.org/programs/esnr/cellphone.pdf (from book) = is the source. The URL ending .org means this sponsor as a non-profit organization.
-The source is within a site sponsored by the National Conference of state legislatures.

- It’s key to have websites that are non profit organizations.


2.) Clear dates of publication and update show currency

3.) Author is a credible expert whose credentials can be verified.
- Contact information is given at the end of the article.


Evaluating a Web Site (Sources)
1.) The Website sponsors
-Is sponsored by a law firm that specializes in personal injury law.
2.) Website setup tells you what type of audience the website is intended for
- The relative size and placement of the toll-free number suggest the site’s intended audience: Injured people seeking to file a personal-injury lawsuit.
3.) The web site mentions a credible journal
- Site mention an article in a reputable journal, main purpose of the site is still to sell a service.



Make sure that you maintain a working bibliography
A working bibliography is a collection of all of the sources that you decide to consult throughout the process of researching and writing your paper.
· This collection will contain both materials that you use in your final paper and also ones that you do not. At the end or your paper you will only put the ones that you used into your final works cited.
· Your information should contain information copied from books, the web, and any other sources that you may use.
When searching for bibliographic information on a web page you may have to dig a little to find it.
· Some key things that you really want to try and find are the author’s name, the date of publication, and the name of the sponsoring organization.
· Do not assume that the information is not there just because you don’t see it right away.
As you collect all of your sources you want to make sure that you keep them as organized as possible.
· A good way to do this is to print off everything that you get off of the internet and to make photo copies of all the hard copy sources that you use.
· By doing this you can separate your sources into different categories to follow your outline and then you can also highlight and color-coat them.




Managing information: avoiding plagiarism
Main idea: As you take notes, avoid unintentional plagiarism
Be careful not to borrow language from your sources. Even if you half-copy the author’s sentences-either by mixing the author’s phrases with your own without quotation marks or by plugging your synonyms into the author’s sentence structure.
There are three kinds of note taking: summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting.
(Put quotation marks around any text)

1. Summarizing without plagiarizing
A summary condenses in formation, perhaps reducing a chapter to a short paragraph to a single sentence. If you use phrases from the source, put them in quotation marks.
2. Paraphrasing without plagiarizing
A paraphrase is written in your own words, but whereas a summary reports significant information in fewer words than the source. Use quotation marks if you retain occasional choice phrases from the source.
3. Using quotation marks to avoid plagiarizing
A quotation consists of the exact words from a source. Copy the words of your source exactly, including punctuation and capitalization.