Library Transcripts

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09KXP9XwD24

 

 

Begin Transcript

 

Narration:

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  Hello and welcome to this webinar. Before we get started with anything important I want to make sure you can hear us. So if someone could go to the questions panel and just let us know yes, we can hear you, I would appreciate that, I will keep talking until somebody has done that. No one has done it yet.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  I have posted the link to the transcription services in the chat. If anybody needs that it's in the chatbox.

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  It looks like one person has said hello. I am going to take that to mean that you can hear us. I am just going to go over a few housekeeping issues before we get going at the top of the hour.

 

So the PowerPoint that we're going to be using for this webinar, it is available in handouts section. So if you look at the panel for GoToWebinar, it should be on the right-hand side of your screen, depending on the device that you're using. But there should be an area that says handouts. Click on the little triangle to open up the handouts section. Then you will see an orange square with a P on a that's the PowerPoint symbol.  Then click right on the name of the PowerPoint edible open up and you can save it to your computer or your device if you want to.

 

We will record this session. We get a lot of questions about that so we just want to let you know that we will be recording this session. And you will automatically get a copy of that recording. In a few days, it will come from Susan Stekel, one of our other librarians. The account is in her name. Is automated from GoToWebinar so if you don't see a, then check your spam or junk mail. Sometimes likes to go there instead. And we are happy to answer content related questions as we can. There are two of us but there are more of you. [LAUGHS] So we may not be able to answer your questions right away, but you can put those in the questions box on the GoToWebinar panel, also.

 

And if you have other questions that are not related to what we're talking about tonight, we ask that you would instead use our Ask a Librarian service. And we will point that out. It's on our library website. There's a little button that says Ask a Librarian at the top right  and you can send any other library questions you have there again, if it doesn't relate to what we're talking about tonight.

 

It is the top of the hour so I'm going to go ahead and advance my slides and I will go ahead and start the recording.

 

All right, thank you for attending this webinar and again, welcome. This is one of our webinars that's part of our Evaluating Resources series. This webinar is about What about stuff I find on the Internet?:  Knowing When to Use and What to Trust You Find on the Internet. I am Erin Guldbrandsen and joining me is Kim Burton.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  Hello.

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  I am one of two liaison librarians for the College of Health Professions and Kim is one of two education liaison librarians. So that's a little bit about us. As we get into the content now, we'd like you to know we are real people with our WebCams. But I'm going to turn that off now so it's not distracting.

 

Now we will go ahead and get into what our objectives are tonight. But before we do that like I said, it is a series that we then presenting about evaluating resources. It's a large topic -- how to evaluate materials. So we have actually divided up that topic of evaluating resources into many different webinars, and we present them as a series.

 

On the PowerPoint, if you do have those slides, you can link directly to archived webinars from the rest of the series. So, the first one was What Is This Stuff, it's hard to identify materials that you found in the library to figure out what is it, is it a newspaper article? Is it a scholarly peer-reviewed article?  You can link to that and watch that webinar.

 

There's another one we did that was the different styles of evaluation or different methods of evaluation. And you can watch that one.

 

Then there was another webinar we did about using the right resource at the right time. Sometimes one material is useful in one scenario and then in another context, you need a different type of material.

 

So, you can watch all of those webinars that we've already done in this series and watch the whole series. And then you'll know everything that we can tell you about evaluating resources. [LAUGHS]

 

So tonight, in this webinar, our objectives are looking at what you find on the Internet, on the World Wide Web. How do you critically evaluate resources that you come across through a Google search or just links that you find or anything that's just out there on the Internet?

 

Part of what we're going to talk about, Kim is going to walk us through identifying fake, biased or satirical news content. Those are actually all different things. So she's going to talk about what is each of those things mean and then, how do you identify it? And I'm going to also talk about protecting yourself from really potentially harmful fake or misleading resources on the Internet. And, "misleading" can take a lot of different forms and particularly "harmful" can take a lot of different forms.

 

So we are going to talk about those things in some different scenarios. And we do like to have this disclaimer here that all the links that we are going to show you in this webinar are being used as examples. So we don't own or use any of these websites, necessarily. We're using them to educate you, to instruct you on evaluating resources. But none of these things are ours, and it doesn't mean we advocate for the use of any of them because we are showing them in this webinar. [LAUGHS]

 

So before I handed over to Kim, I'm just going to talk a little bit about why are we even talking about this as part of our evaluating sources series? Why does it matter to evaluate what you find on the Internet?

 

Well, one reason is because the Internet at large is separate, it's different than using library online resources. This is something that students will sometimes say to us as librarians, maybe they went on to the library website ... I'm just going to go there real fast. And let's say they went to Select a Subject or they went to Databases A through Z. In the say, library database, say this one. And they found some resources, some articles online, it is online. Guest. We are online right now on the Walden Library website. But we are not just on the Internet at large. [LAUGHS] This database, usually we use databases to search inside journals to find articles in the library. This is a resource we have paid to have access to. The Walden Library pays for it. If you are not a Walden student, you saw that I logged in. If you didn't have a login you wouldn't be able to access it. Other universities had the same database. It's a good database for the content that it has two research business topics. So, this is a resource that libraries pay to have access to. It has things in it, Journal articles in it that you would not be able to find just out on the Internet. That's probably something you've experienced that maybe you have come across the name of an article if you can't get it for free just by googling it, if it's something that we have paid to have access to in our databases, you would have to go in to a Walden Library database to actually get it, to access the full text.

 

So the library, again, the context content we have, yes it's online. I am connected to the Internet and accessing these things to the library. But that's the key part, and accessing these things through the Walden Library. They are paid for resources that we have to pay to have access to. That is different than just going to Google search and typing in "business leadership articles." I'm not going to get the content that I would be able to see to the Walden Library. So that's just something we like to address because students have said that, I was told I'm not allowed to use an online resource. So I can't use anything from the library. No, that's not what that means. If you were ever told that, don't use online resources or don't use Internet resources, that means you can still use the Walden Library, use the content that is available through the Walden Library that you wouldn't be able to find just through a Google search.

 

The other reason we want to talk about evaluating Internet resources is sure, you probably won't be able to use a lot of Internet resources in your time is a student at Walden. Most of your assignments and discussion posts are going to ask for those scholarly discussions you get through the Walden Library. But we still want you to be able to protect yourself as an information consumer. We all take in a lot of information every day from news sources, from informational websites. Three things that our friends or family post through social media. We are bombarded, really, with information all the time. We all consume vast amount of information.

 

So we want to make sure that you know, just as a human being in this technology driven age, that you can protect yourself from whatever you find on the Internet and to be able to discern what's a good source and what's not a good source, regardless of how you're going to use it.

 

So, that is a danger of not being critical or not evaluating Internet resources, is that you're then in danger of spreading false news, potentially scaring people where there's no need to be scared. Or really, just eroding your own reputation and your own credibility if you share something that turns out not to be factual. It can make you look bad, it can make all of us look bad.

 

Those are just some of the reasons. I know that you will not have a lot of opportunities as a Walden student to use Internet resources and assignment or discussion posts. But really just as a person it's good to be knowledgeable about these things again, for your own reputation or credibility. And sometimes, there are times in assignments for you might even be asked to use an Internet resource. So you would definitely then want to be able to identify a good and credible resource, even if you find it on the Internet.

 

Now I'm going to hand it over to Kim and she's going to give us some examples.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  Great, let me just share my screen with you. There it is. So are you seeing my screen here?

 

One of the first things we can do, we are online and we want to be aware of what we're looking at is take some time to actually look at the different URLs that are out there. So, you have an idea of what you're looking at. I have some common endings for URLs here. The most common of which is the.com. So the first one I have here, Amazon.com..com stands for commercial. Usually this is a commercial website, entertainment website, a news website. It's just a general business sort of website.

 

Another thing you can find when you're looking at URLs is a country code. So the next example here I have an ie. IE stands for Ireland. If this was a United Kingdom website it would have UK in there. Again, it's just little clues so when you're looking at a website look at the URL so you have an idea where it's coming from.

 

Websites that end in EDU our educational websites. Usually higher education such as universities, but also elementary schools, schools at different levels. Government websites usually end in gov. When you're in the United States. So here's the  Colorado state website, and in gov. And the United States also has military websites so if you have a website that end in.mil, that would be a states military website which some people might access if you're looking for things like statistics or reports that you might need for a weekly assignment or a course project.

 

Finally there is the org which is for organizations, often nonprofits. But you have to be a little careful, just because something ends in.org does not mean it says what it says it is. There are ways people can get websites to have different endings, different codes at the end when they are not actually a nonprofit organization. They may actually be a disreputable website that might actually be wanting to take advantage of you.

 

So the first thing you want to do is look at these URLs, see if there's any clues there then take that with a grain of salt and continue on to look at some other clues.

 

One of the things you want to do on the website is look at the About button. There should be a About button you can get in there and look at that website. If there is nothing there, look at the footer. A lot of time just for aesthetic reasons, companies might put the cap about button at the bottom of the website. Then, come and look at other websites and see if the information contained in the one you're looking at is also contained elsewhere. If it's only in this one area, if only one news organization is reporting on this, that might be a warning sign that this may not be a legitimate website.

 

So what I want to do is actually go out and show you a couple of different websites and that I'm going to ask you guys if you can tell me which one of these, which one might be the fake, which one might be the real website. I want to take some time to show you some educational websites.

 

The first one is called All about Explorers, all about explorers.com, it says right here it's going to show me "everything you've ever wanted to know about every Explorer who ever lived." That is kind of a tall order, I would be pretty impressed if they could actually pull this off. But it's a great looking website isn't it? They have links here for explorers A to Z, links for teachers, a link About this site, there's also a link up here for About this site where I can go and click here to find out about the authors to find out who produced this website. So we have a bunch of different people here, some of them have some credentials here. Dr. Eton Kroe has a bunch of different credentials, I'm not even familiar with some of those. That we have [indiscernible] who is the legal and political analyst as well as the Doughnut Glazer for this website which I am not familiar with. That's our first website we are looking at.

 

The next one is called enchanted learning. This website is kind of plain looking. I think the All about Explorers website was more entertaining, more theatrical. This is more basic, lots of links here, very basic pictures and animations. Let's go to the About button. And here it talks about Enchanted Learning. How it was developed. It has the names of the people who developed it with links to contact them. We can also go to the Contact Us link and you can see they are providing us a lot of information to get a hold of them. Not just questions, but different reasons, if you forgot your password, if you are looking for specific things, requests. So they are making it easy for you to get out and contact them.

 

I also see that it has today's date on it, so that's nice, that makes me think it's being updated regularly.

 

The final website is the Ova Prima Foundation which is a foundation that was created to help solve the never ending question of what came first, the chicken or the egg? It's their lifelong duty to find the answer to that question. I see that it's updated, it has today's date so it must be updated daily. I'm just going through here a little bit, let me see, there's About button. There is a home page, this is the home page and they have this person here there's really no information about him. When we click on the Contact Us, all I'm getting is a little pop-up...oops, on my other screen ... I am just getting a little pop-up on my other screen to send them an email. I don't have any other phone numbers, I don't have any way to get in touch with them. This is a little odd. This is the Ova Prima Foundation.

 

What I want to do is ask you guys what you think is the real one and which one, which of the two would be fake. Let me pull up this. Which one you think is the real site.

 

So go ahead and vote. Okay. Great. So now, I can... and I sharing this? [LAUGHS]

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  I think you need to close it, first.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  Okay.

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  There you go, and that should give you the option to share.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  There it is. Good thing that we have Erin with us. Are you seeing those results?

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  Yes.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  Great job, everyone got it correct, that Enchanted Learning is the correct website. I'm sorry, let me close that out, I am all over the place right now.

 

What I can tell you about that Enchanted Learning, you can see it says right here that children [READING TEXT] …."Our material is created so the navigation controls are intuitive." That's exactly what they did and that's why it looked that way.

 

If we go back to All about Explorers, we notice that some of these things they are saying is a little far-fetched. "Everything you ever wanted to know." These bios are fake, obviously. At the bottom it says Click Here for the Real Story. This website was created by educators for students, to have students test out, see how they could go online to find something that really looks nice, some information might be correct but there might be false information in there as well. So this was for students.

 

The last one, the Ova Prima Foundation, this was something put together for fun. There's a lot of inconsistencies of we go through these links. But one of the main ones is right here at the beginning, it says, "since 1887." In the second paragraph it says it was founded in 1865, so right there is an inconsistency that pops out at you.

 

Now I want to go and show you a couple other websites. I would put them in the environmental category. This one right here is Forests for All, FSC Forever. This is a website for forest conservation. I was going to look at the URL, it's a.org but also has en-us, and that is because this happens to be the United States version of this company, this organization. I want to find out some information so I can click on this What We Do, we have a Mission, we have Facts and Figures. We can go to Who We Are. And it talks about their history, their membership, You can go to their governments to find out who they are, who is sitting on the governance board. They go to their financial reporting. They are very upfront, they're upfront about everything they are doing, because they want you to trust them.

 

The next website I want to go to is the DHMO.org. The dihydrogen monoxide research division. This is a website that wants to talk about the controversy surrounding DHMO. When I am looking here I see things like the DHMO conspiracy. When I see something with "conspiracy" it rings and alarm, because that's a big claim, a conspiracy, it makes me think really, is it a conspiracy, are they coming at me at a specific angle? I want to find more about this so I am going to look for a About button and I see that they don't have a About button. That's kind of strange, I don't like that, I want to find out more information about them and they are not providing me more information, just lots of links to other areas special reports and frequently asked questions.

 

Let's go to my last website and this is the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus which happens to be endangered. And this is a website that is here to help it from going to extinction. They have a lot of information here. You can even look up some sightings from people who have found some tree  octopi in our area. When I go to the About I get a lot of information about tree octopi. I go down to the footer and it doesn't say much. Except this website was created by someone named Lyle Zapato. So that's somebody I want to look up, I went to do a separate search to see who this person is. He is associated with the Kalvenic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society so this is something else I am going to want to look up to see if this is a real website. So I'm going to go back to another quiz here, let's see if I can get this one a little better. Thank you for bearing with me.

 

Okay, I launched it. And I want you to pick which one you think is the correct website, the Forest Stewardship Council, Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division, or the Endangered Pacific Northwest Octopus. I would just wait a second, see if anyone else wants to vote. 50% have voted.

 

About half of you have answered, I am going to close the poll. We have a split result. You guys did a couple different things. I'm thinking most of you picked the Pacific Northwest tree octopus but I have to say, that's not correct. This is not a real website. I think this is just someone who wants to have a lot of fun. MI sharing my website or MI on the ...?

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  We see the website.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  Great. This is actually just for fun. I have to give them credit, they have put a lot of effort into this to make it a lot of fun, to go out there, have people mailing in sightings of octopus in tree.

 

Dihydrogen monoxide.org that was not a real website. They have about, they use terms like "conspiracy" which rings alarms. I do see there is a Press Kit link which does give the username and password name. So often put this in here, it brings me to this website, this section where it actually does say that this is not a real website. The original purpose was just a way for the writer to blow off steam and point out how some websites can be very devious and you have to be careful about it. For any of you who might have a little bit of a chemistry background, DMHO is just another term for H2O which is a chemical compound for water.

 

The actual real website was the Forest Stewardship Council website. I could tell this was a real website because they were being so upfront with me. They were telling me where the money was going. I have a link to the Board of Directors where I can contact them. They have a list of their governments, they are putting out what they do and who they are and being very transparent with you because they want you to donate to their organization.

 

That's a couple ways we can go out and see if these are real website or not.

 

Now I want to go talk a little bit about the different types of websites that are out there. We are going to be talking about these different ones but I am going to go out and start showing you these examples.

 

The first website and want to target to you about are fake or misleading websites.

 

Let's go to Google and say you want to do research on Martin Luther King. So you put in Martin Luther King, you hit return. And we get ... it's not coming up, sorry. Martin Luther King.org, because that is.org, it's probably going to be a website that has a lot of good information about him. And you see what happens is actually blocked from accessing this because I'm on my work computer and they block websites that contain hateful messages. So I'm not allowed to go to this website. There's actually a group of white supremacist who have taken this domain name and they have created a website and they pretend that it's about Martin Luther King but it's actually filled with lies. And this is an example of a fake website. These are websites that are made up stories or hoaxes that are delivered under the pretext of actual news based website or fact-based websites, when they are completely fabricated. They are designed to mislead you, to generate fear or panic. You have to be very aware of these types of sites.

 

I want to show you the actual website if you wanted to go to Dr. Dr. King's website is the king center.org. But you can see how misleading that is because Martin Luther King.org has that.org so kids might think it's an actual site, when in fact, it's not.

 

 

The next site I want to show you is a news site for satirical news. This is the Daily Mash. Satirical news is a website that is a parody of actual events or news. It's for entertainment purposes only, just for fun. What they do is they often mimic reputable news sites using recent information or stories and kind of taking them out of context and exaggerating them a little. Some of the stories here, a woman decides train is perfect place to have incredibly personal phone conversation. Best man's speech hits all the wrong notes. These aren't major headlines, these are just funny, supposed to be taking as tongue-in-cheek, meant to make you laugh. So how can we find out if this is a real news outlet or a satirical news outlet? Well, we are going to look for the About and I don't see the About here but I could scroll down to the bottom and I will click on the About and they are right up front with you. They tell you, they are a satirical website, it's just spoofs, just for fun. That's what it is. You can always double check when you're looking at these websites if you're not sure.

 

The next type of site I want to point out is biased or slanted news, it's kind of hard to show you a website that is biased or slanted news. News that is delivered from a particular point of view that may rely on propaganda or opinions rather than facts will be considered biased or slanted news. It's out there a lot. It's very prevalent. Sometimes it's hard to recognize, sometimes it's an opinion, and editorial. It's not wrong, it's just not your opinion. It's someone else's. So it's coming from their viewpoint that might be slanted or biased in that way. Some of them are a little more biased than others. Some of them are specifically out there with an agenda to give you misleading information by exaggerating news for an exaggerating viewpoint so you will be more likely to agree with them than the opposing viewpoint. Since I can't go out and show you some websites that are biased, because it's hard to determine what biases versus somebody else's. I am going to show you a website called allsides.com. What they do is, they can help you look at the web, look at the use through three different lenses.

 

The first thing they do is they allow you to go and do a search ... I'm sorry, they allow you to go in and vote on different websites. They have these news outlets here and they have done a lot of research on them, they have put this out here with, and you can vote to see which side do you think this leads on, if it's far left, a little left, center, right or far right. After the research they have applied the rating, you can't agree or disagree. It has the community feedback here. But most of them seem to be, most of the green ones, the public are generally believing in. So if you're looking at a website or news outlet you can look it up here and say okay, generally this guy might be a little more to the right than the left.

 

The next thing they do is when they show you the news, they provide those three lenses. They have the same story, then they have it from a news outlet that has been rated in the center bias, one is from the far left and one that's from the far right. So you can see how other people are reporting the same story just from their point of view, from where they are coming from. So I thought this was a cool little website to look at, especially because it does not with the three different lenses to look at stories.

 

And the last website I want to show you is a clickbait website. Clickbait are sites that uses sensationalized, misleading, often exaggerating headlines and images to get you to visit the website. The articles then deliver information that is usually not related to the original, eye-catching piece. It's pretty much basically just to generate advertising or revenue. Buzz Feed is an example of that. They have a lot of headlines here but no stories. You have to click on everything to access the stories. They have lots of photos here. Things that catch your attention that you want to look at then you click on it and then you have to click on three other clicks to get to the actual story.

 

One thing you should also be careful about when you're in these types of websites is something called native advertising. That's when they have something that looks like a story but is actually an advertisement. So you have to be careful, it looks like you're just going to read the story but really it's an advertisement for a company or a product.

 

And, that is what a clickbait website looks like. And those were all links to all of those websites if you wanted to look at them.

 

So how do you protect yourself when you're out there, when you're looking at all these websites and you're finding this fake news? You have to look at everything as a critical news consumer. You need to analyze what you're looking at and then you need to share and act upon that responsibly. If you see something out there that is exaggerated, uses terms like "conspiracy" or something like that, is this something you want to share? You want to make sure that you do your research and make sure it is accurate and true before you share. Because this is your credibility, your repetition, if you're sharing this news and spreading it, you're going to want to make sure this is correct. How do you do that? By evaluating it. This is a link here to the evaluating, the library's guide to evaluating resources. There's a lot of great information there. I will just click on it to bring this up.

 

And it tells you how  you can evaluate different stories. You can look at the author, these are questions to ask. Look at the author, who are they, what else have they written about? Look at the publisher, are they on the left side or are they on the right side? Look at the piece, was it printed recently? And when you're reading the content you can ask these questions too, is it objective? Is it using sensational language? Does it sound like it has a bias? Just questions to ask yourself as you're going through these articles.

 

You can double check the information on other websites, then you can also use investigative resources and I have a couple of examples here of websites that actually search for fake news or, sometimes things get up there, is it true or not? You can go to these websites and look them up. I have available here. Snopes is one, you can type in ... the super volcano. Let's look up the super volcano on Snopes it will let us know of any stories about the super volcano, if there's any fact to the super volcano. So here's a couple of the stories and this was a rumor about the animals fleeing, about a super volcano in Yellowstone.

 

Here's another website, politifact, which I have to reload. Politifact is another website where you can type in a story or question and they will look it up for you and they will tell you if it's true or not. Sometimes it's half true, sometimes maybe just a little bit false. And unfortunately, it's not loading for me right now. Is unresponsive. Okay. But that's just another one that you can look at and, factcheck.org is also another website where you can go and check anything that you're finding on the web.

 

Another thing you can do is verify images. A lot of times, unscrupulous reporters might use images, recycle images, I should say, images that were used for another story, they can pull up years later and retag them with a recent story when in fact that image has nothing to do with it. This is just another way to generate stronger feelings about a story, to get you upset about something. What you can do, if you see an image that is upsetting in a story that seems a little bit sensational is double check that image, see if it's real. This is a link to a guide we have in the library that will help you determine that. And I just go and show you how we can do this.

 

I'm going to go to the Walden University Facebook page. And here's a picture of me and Meryl Streep we went to the Oscars last year. Let's say you came across this and you don't believe that I to the Oscars with Meryl, who is my best, best friend. What you can do is you can right-click on the image and then click on Copy Image Address. We're going to go to Google and then we're going to click on the Images link up on the right-hand side. Then, in this toolbar, search bar, excuse me, we're going to click on the icon of the camera and we're going to paste that URL on there and hit search by image. And is going to search for this image. And there it found it. That's a strange ... when I did this earlier today, it brought back all of the images of Meryl Streep at the Oscars. Let me try this again ... we'll try it one more time. Maybe my computer is just not liking me today. So there I am with Meryl. But if you scroll down, you see, here's the same photo and I'm not in it. So obviously, that was a fake photo of me and Meryl Streep at the Oscars. I did not go to the Oscars with Meryl Streep. I am sorry about that little technical glitch there. I got it fixed for you.

 

And again this is a link that goes over the steps on how you can verify images online.

 

Now, I'm going to go ahead and switch this over back to Erin.

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  Thank you, I'm just going to talk a little bit about other information or other websites that you would find online and just to reiterate some of these fields that we're talking about like, double-checking the information. Can you find the same thing on another website? Can you find something that backs up a claim that you find on a website? So I'm talking about health information as my examples, not just because I'm a health liaison librarian, but also because that has a lot of potential for harm. You can find health information that is not verifiable, and if you take its advice, for instance. So, sometimes it assignments or discussions, you can sometimes use non-library resources like if you did, for instance, need some statistics, just like what percentage of adults has diabetes in the United States, something like that, we can definitely find that through a government website, and that is usually what a librarian would suggest to you, that you go to something like the CDC and you pull up a statistic there because it's a government website, a government entity where they collect that kind of statistic.

 

But there's so many other websites out there that are health related that are not government entities or they're also not credible organizations. So sometimes with really rare diseases, you might find an organization that is like a nonprofit that's committed to fundraising to find a cure for that. They can also be a good credible source if it's a really rare disease, to find information about it. But then you've got a lot of other not so good information  on health topics out there.

 

So anytime you're on a website that is related to health or any other topic, you want to look for research that backs up the claims that they're making on that website. Are they citing sources? Are they talking about a new treatment and then they're linking to the actual research study? That would be a good sign, if they're thinking to the original research, even if they're just sharing it in a news fashion.

 

Another thing I tell people, you want to be really leery of blogs or anecdotal information. So, someone writing on their blog "this supplement was really great for me and it cured me rheumatoid arthritis," that's one person. That's their blog. Happy for them, that's great if they feel better. But it may not be backed up clinical trials or research studies that this supplement is really helping them. So those are just a few tips and when to use an example of a website that I actually do see students citing when they are able to use Internet resources.

 

Here's one that is a good source of information, the Mayo Clinic. Maybe you've heard of the Mayo Clinic. It's an actual real clinic for people get treated. [LAUGHS] You can see up here at the top you can request an appointment, you can find a doctor. So there are people who are actually patients at the Mayo Clinic. But beyond that, they also have a variety of information sources about different diseases and conditions.

 

So, these are experts who are writing this concept and then, these are sites, if you were a patient there your doctor might say okay, I want you to go home and look up congenital heart disease, you can find it on our clinics website, you can learn about if there. But it's also for anybody, you don't have to be a patient at the Mayo Clinic to see their helpful information about different diseases and conditions.

 

So this is a good example of something, it's out on the Internet, but I can just this website, they are a well-recognized clinic, treatment center, and they also have all of this wealth of information on the website. It's a good place just to get background information. From a student perspective, that's what I would use it for, using it for background information. They might even get some statistics on here like how common it is about whatever disease they're talking about. So it is under, listed under their Patient Care and Health Info, but you can find some things here that would be helpful as a student in your work, there could be some statistics. And you could just this, this is a good place to go, again, for the background information.

 

Now, unfortunately also seen people sometimes cite this website. I don't know if it's because they both start with M or what. [LAUGHS] But I think, honestly, it's because this Mercola website, it does come up a lot when you Google certain things. If you use Google as your search engine.

 

So let's take a quick look at this. One of the first things that jumps out to me on this website is that there's a cart at the top. So right away, that tells me this website is selling something or many things. And sure enough, look, here's Shop over here. If I click on Shop, it's going to bring me to health products, supplements, all kinds of products that this website sells.

 

Now, it is a website run by a doctor, Dr. Mercola. This is one of those instances where it's a really good idea too, then, let's go search this person's name. Who is this person. And if I just search for this doctor's name, yes, that website comes up as one of the first thing, but it does tell me right here that it is selling wellness products. There are some things that seem like news or information but, the main purpose is a.com, the main purpose here is for this Dr. Mercola to sell his products.

 

And if I look over here, this is coming from Wikipedia, so I would maybe that want to go look I get another source to see more information about this person. But sure enough, he does have a degree, he is an osteopathic physician which is different from a medical doctor, and MD. That's a little different. Mostly, he is selling dietary supplements and medical devices through his website. So it does accurately describe him as, is not just a doctor, he's a web entrepreneur.

 

So anything I find, and look right here, I see something from a place called Quack Watch where he's been ordered to stop making illegal claims, probably about the effectiveness of the things he sells. There is some controversy, so here's something from a magazine, is he a visionary or a quack? Maybe there's some controversy there. Maybe some things are useful and some things not so useful. I would definitely dive in to a lot of research from other sources with any information, any health news that I find through this website. I want to go back it up and look for a research articles, even if I don't read the whole research article, but just see, is there actually research about this? Read the research, read the conclusions and see if any of this is accurate that I find there. This is just a really good example, there could even be statistics here about some of the diseases that his products are meant to treat. But I'm not sure I even want to cite it for a statistic. I would rather go someplace like the Mayo Clinic or the CDC, look for that statistic or that information from another source. It's not to say  that everything I find here is false. It's just to say that a lot of it is probably written in a way that it's supposed to make me want to go click on shop and buy a supplement. It is a .com  and he's a web entrepreneur. This website is meant to sell his products.

 

So that is one example, it is not in the slide deck because I literally just thought of this as Kim was speaking. This is my nonhealth example so everything is not health with me. I happen to live in Oregon, a lot of us work remotely. My friend was interested in becoming a substitute teacher here in Oregon. I was like, I will Google that for you, I don't know what you need to do, either, to become a substitute teacher. I did Oregon substitute teacher and I got a lot of different results. This first one, that's what I have open over here. The first result is from teaching-certification.com. That I don't think they are trying to be unhelpful and I don't think they're purposely misleading people, but if you look@this.com, it says that you have to have a bachelor's degree and have a first aid card to obtain a Restricted Test Substitute Teaching License. I told my friend it sounds really easy. But then I thought you know what, to be a good librarian I should probably actually check the government website for Oregon and make sure this is true. Let's check more than one source.

 

Sure enough, I went to Oregon.gov and I made sure I was on the Oregon.gov website, this is the government entity that is in charge of licensing teachers and substitute teachers. I came down here I was like yeah, it was talking about a restricted substitute teaching license. I go there and unfortunately, look, there's a lot more you have to do. You have to have a letter of sponsorship from an employee school district, so you kind of already have to know someone and you have to have that bachelor's degree, yes, but you also have to pass this exam. It was a lot more than just having a bachelor's degree and having a first aid card.

 

Again, I don't think this other website is purposely trying to mislead people, it's just not completely accurate. It does talk about that exam down here, but it doesn't say anything about having that letter of sponsorship for your first restricted license. It just wasn't complete information. So the.gov is where I went and I got the full picture and that's who I should have just gone to in the first place. I should have known that as a librarian, just go straight to the.gov. So that's just another really good example of, if that's something I was talking about in a discussion post about the differing requirements for substitute teachers or something, I wouldn't want to cite this.com, because it didn't even get the full picture. It's okay if I started there about hmmm, let me just double check that and make sure I get the same information from a different source and then go to the.gov and realize, here's the full thing, here's what I would want to cite. So that's another thing that came to me about using the Internet for all different kinds of information sources. I think we have just a few more questions for you before we wrap up. So I'll go ahead, I'll do this remaining polls. We'll do a little knowledge check, see what you've remembered about what with talked about in this webinar.

 

So our first one is just a true or false question. And again, you just click on your answer, it's true or false that educational institutions' websites end in edu. Does that sound like something we talked about, may become tonight? I'm just going to wait until most of you have voted. We really love it when you participate with us in our little quizzes here. I'll give it a few more seconds, I will close it in five, four, three, two, one. All right. Everybody got that one right. Yes. Educational institutions' websites will and in that.edu. You should be familiar with that because of your Walden email ending also in.edu. [LAUGHS]

 

Our next question, let me hide.com is when looking at a news site, what of the following can help you figure out if it's satire, if it's fake or if it's heavily biased? And actually, Kim, I might need your help with this one because I'm not sure I even remember what's right here. We'll let people vote and people can choose as many of these as they want. Which one of these would help you determine if it's fake, satirical, or heavily biased. I think I've got one person who has voted. I'm going to wait until at least one more person ... we're going to give it five more seconds, two more seconds. We got some people.

 

So it looks like ...

 

>> KIM BURTON:  Yes, the About page, that's absolutely correct. Into the Footer is correct, because if there is about, you go to the footer to see if anything is there. You could do an online search for information about the site, that can help you, if you go back to that one site I showed you, it showed you where they are on the realm of biases or where they lead to. So I think the first three are good answers there.

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  Excellent. I like that you added in the fourth one, "by clicking on links," because it seems like that would help. But they could be linking to things that are also from the same news site so it can be like a loop they are ending up in. Although you could learn, you can figure that out. I see where you're going with that. That's a really good answer you came up with for that. [LAUGHS]

 

Let's do the next one, great job with that one. The next two are true or false.

 

Resources I find to the library are just like resources I find on the World Wide Web with a Google search. Are those two things exactly the same? Basically it's saying, resources I find are exactly the same, it doesn't matter if they come from the library or just on a Google search. And again, I'm going to wait until more people vote this time. I'm going to be a stickler on it this time. I'm going to give it at least 25 seconds, we don't know is voting which way, you're not going to get points taken off your GPA or anything. [LAUGHS] You can be wrong, this is very low stakes.

 

I got one more person to interact with us so I'll go ahead and close it. Everybody got that right, that is False, they are not the same. The library resources, again, we've actually developed this is a collection of resources, so that's a phrase we use in libraries, that we do collection development. And in our case, that means choosing the databases that we're going to pay for. And sometimes we believe a link to government websites or other credible sources that are on the Internet, but they have we have determined they are needed for certain things or that they are authoritative or trustworthy. So even in that sense, it's not the same as just doing a Google search. You're going to find things to the library that you would not find do that Google search, also.

 

One last question it's true or false, that blogs are reliable, trustworthy source of health information. I really helping everybody gets that right. Will give this about 25 seconds, also. And see if we can get at least one more person this time to vote. I'm going to give it about five more seconds and close it.

 

Everybody got that right. You know what blogs are a good source of? They are a good source for cutes, puppy pictures.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  Or recipes.

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  But read the comments on the recipes because sometimes you will find out it's going to take 10 minutes longer than what it said. So, yes. Not a good source for health information. I've even seen vets that have blogs and it's kind of like advertising for their veterinary practice. I don't even like going to event log when it's like a question about my dogs. I would rather, and that in that case and asked them.

 

Great job with that when everybody, they give for humoring us and doing those. It's good to know that you got some of those skills done and we do hope this makes you feel more confident in using Internet resources whether it's for an assignment or just in your daily, everyday life.

 

Before we go, I did want to point out the Ask a Librarian button, if you have questions about using the library resources, like for instance, if you need help finding scholarly, peer-reviewed articles on a topic, great time to use our Ask a Librarian service. It's up in the right corner, click on that and you can see all the ways to get in touch with us. If you send us an email through this form, we will give you a very timely response. We answer emails typically within 24 hours. Usually it's a lot faster than that, but certain times of the year like a term start -- hint, hint, that's coming up at the end of the month  it might take us the full 24 hours when there's a term start because there are a lot of students that usually need our help them. But we are very happy to help you so please do use our Ask a Librarian form if you need any help using the library.

 

Then, just another reminder that we do have that Evaluating Resources Guide enters the link to it. Kim showed us a little bit about it. So wealth of information, really, not just for evaluating Internet resources, but also to think critically even about this, the resources that you find in the library. So take a look at that. And again, thank you so much for attending. We are right at time so we will stick around to see if there are a couple questions we can answer those. Thank you for coming, everyone.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  I'm not seeing any new questions.

 

>> ERIN GULDBRANDSEN:  Okay, great. Then I will go ahead and end the webinar.

 

>> KIM BURTON:  Good night, everyone.

 

 

End Transcript

 

Created June 2018 by Walden University Library