On some parts of the Internet and World Wide Web, much is published without benefit of expertise or editor. This makes our jobs as information consumers, students and teachers a bit more difficult than in the print world, but similar evaluation criteria are required. Some standard evaluation criteria are difficult for the novice to use because some knowledge about the topic or subject is prerequisite to evaluate new information. Characteristics of Print and Electronic Sources Books, journals, magazines and newspapers are the most common printed resources. Publication of these usually involves a fairly lengthy process of writing, editing, reviewing or refereeing, printing and distribution.
Some electronic resources go through a similar process.
Print and electronic resources are often indexed in library catalogs, periodical indexes and other databases to assist in locating information. However publishing on the World Wide Web does not necessarily go through the same often rigorous steps. Information on the WWW may be found using gateway sets of links prepared by libraries, search engines and other aggregators and individual webpages. Publishers of print materials such as periodical indexes, reference materials and encyclopedias also sell subscription access to these sources for delivery over the Internet, using the WWW and or the Internet telnet protocol. Academic, public and corporate libraries purchase and provide access to these databases to their users because these are known to be credible.