Monday, July 6, 2009

Howard Rheingold: Crap Detection 101

Here's a little more on information literacy. Howard Rheingold's recent article, Crap Detection 101, is full of great tips for wading through online "toxic badinfo" and identifying credible information online.

These tips include easywhois.com for finding out who owns a Web site, factchecked.org for verifying online facts, Newstrust for news literacy tools, and many others.

As one commenter noted, Rheingold's article failed to mention that librarians are excellent at detecting and filtering out bad information. Remember that the Research and Instruction librarians at the University Libraries are experts at helping faculty and students with research questions. In addition to walk-in inquiries at the research desk, their "Ask Us" service offers consultations by e-mail, phone, or chat.

Image: Justin Hall, Howard Rheingold, from Howard Rheingold's Web site.

No comments: