Some may see a certain redundancy in this, given that libraries have already provided filtering for information available in the library. In the case of journals, for example, end-user evaluation becomes more important, since libraries provide access to indexes of journals that they might not collect. Savvy Assessment Tools such as Purdue Libraries' The Savvy Student's Guide to Library Research 1 emphasize evaluating the quality of information regardless of where it is found. In particular, this guide insists that users look closely at the reliability, credibility, perspective, and purpose of information. That electronic information is now regarded on a par with its print counterpart.
Some people think they can find anything there and that anything they find is good information.
In our Information Strategies course at the Purdue Libraries, we seek to adapt traditional information evaluation techniques to the Internet environment. We do so by emphasizing the overall nature of information on the Internet and how that information makes it online. We compare a traditional process of finding and evaluating information in an off-line environment to the same process in an online environment, in order to help shape new mental models of understanding. We could then contrast this to a process by which information makes it online directly through Usenet groups, listservs, and Web pages. This comparison points out the lack of evaluative input for much of the information on the Internet.