Abstract

The availability and growth of the Internet offers users the opportunity to find information and data all over the world. The development of the WWW has made the Internet easier to use, both for finding information and for publishing it electronically. Because so much information is available, and because that information can appear to be fairly 'anonymous', It is necessary to develop skills to evaluate what you find. Every printed information resources you find has been evaluated in one way or another before you ever see it. But when you are using the WWW, none of this applies. There are no filters between you and Internet. In addition, the ease of constructing Web documents results in information of the widest range of quality, written by authors of the widest range of authority, available on an even playing field Excellent information resources reside along side the most dubious. This study discusses the criteria arid methods by which scholars and researchers in most fields evaluate print information, and shows how the same criteria and methods can be used to assess Internet Website document. This study applied seven criteria, that is essential Web document element, authorship, publishing body, point of view or bias, referral to other sources, verifiability and currency. All information, whether in print or by byte, needs to be evaluated by users for some objective criteria and methods mentioned above. If you find information that is 'too good to be true', it probably is. Never use information that you can't verity. Always remember that the best counterfeit looks the most like the real thing. Establishing and learning criteria and methods to filter information you find on the Internet is a good beginning for becoming a critical consumer of information in all forms.