Consumer education has long been an essential part of learning Developing Informed Information Consumers by Ivan W. Baugh Consumer education has long been an essential part of the curriculum. Until recent years, it consisted of evaluating advertisements and marketing strategies to determine which item to purchase or what advertisement to believe. With the advent of the Internet and its attendant growth, a new dimension has developed. The rapid explosion of information, coupled with the ease of publishing via the Internet, has brought information consumer education to the forefront. Many teachers want their students to access only reliable sites.
Virtual libraries provide a list of evaluated resources.
In the absence of peer review such as printed materials undergo, someone, often librarians, screened entries listed there. Look at the dates of the resources. Carefully examine the bibliography or list of references. One way to determine the quality of the cited sources involves looking at the authors others have named when writing on the topic. Another consideration involves the copyright dates of the listed references.