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00:00Hey, have you been using my library card again?
00:13You didn't borrow Robot Self-Repair Made Easy?
00:18Teach Yourself Artificial Intelligence.
00:20Okay, I know I didn't take out all these Twilight movies.
00:27Dear Tim and Moby, I use the internet to research all of my papers and reports, but how do I
00:37know if I'm getting good information?
00:40From Sydney.
00:41Hey, Sydney.
00:42There are a lot of great resources online.
00:47Encyclopedias, periodicals, government studies, university research, they serve up millions
00:54of pages you can use for schoolwork.
00:57Unfortunately, plenty of sites aren't that reliable, or just plain wrong.
01:02Like this one, Pretty Sure Humans and Dinosaurs Never Lived Side-by-Side.
01:07Moby and I stumbled on this site while we were researching the Natural Selection movie.
01:11Fortunately, we have a handy-dandy system for evaluating online sources.
01:16And it can be boiled down to just three main steps.
01:19Yep, first we try to find out a little about the publisher.
01:23In other words, the person or group running the website.
01:27One good tip is to look at the domain, the letters that come after the last dot in the
01:31address.
01:32If it ends with a .gov, that means it's a government website.
01:36And .edu's are reserved for accredited, or officially recognized, colleges and universities.
01:43Most of the informational pages on sites in these domains are rigorously fact-checked.
01:48The information they contain has been reviewed and verified to be true.
01:52Other common domains, .coms, .orgs, .nets, whatever, are open.
01:58That means any old person can buy one of these spaces and put whatever information they want
02:02there.
02:05That's true, many popular open domain resources are reliable.
02:09Like BrainPop, we're a .com and we fact-check everything.
02:13But you need to be skeptical of sites you've never heard of before.
02:16That means you shouldn't accept what they say at face value.
02:19First, do a little detective work about the site itself.
02:23Most homepages have an about link, often at the very bottom.
02:27It'll take you to a statement by the editor or publisher laying out who they are and what
02:31they stand for.
02:33This is a good place to look for any potential bias or slant in their viewpoint.
02:37Like, let's say you're doing a report on an American president.
02:41A website's about page might reveal that it's aligned with a political party.
02:46If your president was a member of that party, look out, the information on this site could
02:50be slanted to make them look good.
02:53And if he was in an opposing party, he might be covered in a negative way.
02:57About pages can also reveal a website's sponsors, the people or organizations paying the bills.
03:03It's smart to look them up, too.
03:05A quick search can be quite revealing.
03:07You might discover that they have an agenda, a set of goals they're trying to accomplish.
03:12Whether you agree with those goals or not, you have to ask yourself, are the sites their
03:16sponsoring objective?
03:17In other words, are they trying to present fair, accurate information?
03:22Because writers can purposely twist the truth to advance their website's agenda.
03:27Right, that brings us to the next step.
03:30Check up on the author.
03:32Sometimes there's a mini-biography right on the same page.
03:35The aim here is to find out if they have expertise in the subject they're talking about.
03:40You can always learn more by plugging their name into a search engine.
03:44You'll find other stuff they've written, jobs they've held, and organizations they support.
03:49But if a source doesn't name an author, be extra skeptical of what it says.
03:53And no matter who wrote it or where it appears, you should always evaluate the content itself.
03:59Plenty of publishers post more than one type of content.
04:02A university's website, for example, might have lots of fact-checked articles by experts
04:07in their fields.
04:09But they might also have opinion pieces, press releases, and other material with an agenda.
04:14Like the homepage might try to convince you that they're the best university in the country.
04:19It's not presenting the facts about the institution in an objective way.
04:23Be alert to the goal of any piece of writing.
04:26Is it trying to persuade you of something?
04:28There's nothing wrong with sources that have a strong perspective.
04:31In fact, it's a writer's job to, you know, have a point.
04:36A totally neutral list of facts wouldn't be very interesting.
04:39Writers organize information to support a distinct viewpoint.
04:43So even when all the individual facts are true, they can be used to advance an opinion.
04:48The trick is to recognize that, and determine whether it's an informed opinion.
04:53Is it using emotional language instead of facts and reasoning?
04:57Does it cite sources, showing you where those facts come from?
05:01If so, you can review that original material and form your own opinion.
05:05But if there are no citations, that's a big red flag.
05:08Finally, look at the date the content was published.
05:11It's common to come across pages first posted years or even decades ago.
05:16In some cases, that can be really helpful.
05:19Like if you're trying to learn how people reacted to a certain event.
05:22In other situations, older material can be irrelevant or just totally wrong.
05:28Yep, you could burn through a lot of time finding and evaluating sources.
05:34That's why it's important to keep track of ones you trust.
05:36I've bookmarked dozens of dependable sites organized by subject area.
05:40I know they're trustworthy, so evaluating new articles is way easier.
05:45But if I'm still having trouble finding what I need, I head to the library.
05:49Librarians can point you to online sources you might not have thought about.
05:53And help you locate physical sources that you won't find anywhere else.
05:57Like documentary films and audio interviews, photos, and other historical documents.
06:02Plus, unlike a lot of websites, you won't have to pay for access.
06:06Unless, of course, you're habitually late returning items.
06:10So...