World History: 1. Finding/Evaluating Web Sites

How can you tell if a web site is trustworthy or not? It's not always easy, but there are things that you can look for that will help you decide.

• Who is the author? Are they qualified to talk about this subject?
• How accurate is the information? You may need to compare what you find with another source to answer this question.
• Who is the audience? This can influence how much detail is included.
• What point of view is being represented? All sites have a bias, but is it obvious or are they trying to hide something?
• How up to date is the site? Older information may no longer be accurate.

Finding unfiltered information on the internet about World History is easy.  However, frequently you will get too many entries and many of them will be irrelevant to your specific topic. It requires some skill to do effective searches with focused and relevant results.  Check out the library FAQ on how to "Do better searches".  This could save you time and get better search results.

You can use the window below to find web sites on Google.

The ACC History Department web site also has recommended links to good sites on the internet.  Besides the web pages recommended in this guide, you may want to review their page called "Links to History Sites on the Internet"  Some of the links are duplicated in both places.