KYVL: Information Skills Tutorial, Unit 4: Do Your Sources Match Your Need?
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Information Skills Tutorial
Unit 4: Evaluation of Sources
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Topic: Do Your Sources Match Your Need?

Overview
Lesson



Overview

Evaluating coverage is important in the research process. This means you should try to determine whether the information you’ve found matches your information needs.
Lesson

These are the important questions to ask yourself:

  • Does the source add new information to what you already know? Does it update other sources you have read?
  • How complete is the information? Is it selective or does it attempt to be comprehensive? Is anything left out? If it is an electronic version of a print source, does it include the same information as the print?
  • If the purpose of the source is to explore a controversial issue, are all sides presented?
  • Does the information help you to answer your research questions? How valuable is it compared to other resources you have found? For example, if you need statistics and opinions to back up an argument, ask yourself whether the source offers reliable factual information or simply makes unsupported claims.

Unit 4: 12 of 13


Last Updated: 05/26/2000
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