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Most Web sites fall into six major categories:

Advocacy: Organizational sites attempting to influence public opinion. Mostly useful for analyzing the organization in question.

Business: Commercial sites often provide information, perhaps with bias, and with the larger motive of selling something.

News: Company or organizational attempts to provide current information as a public service. These sites typically include advertisements and may ask you to subscribe for full access.

Information: Sites set up by schools, government agencies, and organizations to present many types of information, both factual and statistical. Many are highly reliable, but some may require critical viewing.

  • Domain is usually .com
  • Ex. CNN
    (www.cnn.com)

Entertainment: Sites devoted to games, music, movies, television, fiction, and pornography.

  • Domain is usually .com.

Personal: Individual home pages set up by people who want to present their work, their ideas, their hobbies, and so on. Many are extremely informative and useful; some are entertaining; others are useless.

  • Domain is usually .com or .edu.

Web Evaluation Checklist: An easy form for your use in evaluating web resources

 
     
 

©2006 - University Libraries , The University of Alabama
adapted with permission from
Healey Library , University of Massachusetts, Boston
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