Chapter 5 of The Bedford Researcher, titled Evaluating Sources (ES), provides
the reader with highly beneficial instructions for, you guessed it, evaluating
sources. ES delivers helpful strategies for evaluating the evidence, the
author, the publisher, the timeliness, the comprehensiveness, and the genre of
a source. By asking questions like “Is enough evidence offered?” or “Is the
right evidence offered?” the reader can get a better understanding of whether
their source applies to their paper. Other questions, such as “Is the author knowledgeable
about the topic?” or “How does the author’s bias affect the information, ideas,
and arguments in the source?” help the reader identify if the author is credible
or just relaying facts. The second part of Chapter 5 is devoted to evaluating
the different types of sources, such as web sites, blogs, social networking
sites, newsgroups, email lists, discussion forums, and wikis. After evaluating the
different types of sources, Chapter 5 shows the reader how to evaluate each one
differently. This can be done, according to ES, by evaluating the relevance and
accuracy of the web site as well as the date it was created. ES recommends
using the most scholarly sources available. Chapter 5 is a fantastically
written, clearly instructional section that is essential to effectively
evaluating the credibility, relevance and comprehensiveness of sources.
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