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HOW TO EVALUATE WEB SITES--Currency and Coverage
- Currency: When was the page last updated?
Currency in web pages is an important issue when you're looking for up-to-date information. A regularly-maintained web page should have a date indicating when it was last modified or updated. Dates are often found at the beginning or end of a page or pages on the site.
- Warning: Sometimes, however, the date found on a web page can be misleading; it could mean the last date it was updated, the date it was first made available via the web, or the date it was first written.
Something to consider:
- Can the currency of the information contained in the site be confirmed by an independent source?
- Coverage: Does the page cover all the information it claims to cover? Coverage is sometimes hard to determine on web sites.
Some things to consider:
- Does the site provide consistently complete information on all aspects of the topics it claims to cover?
- Is the coverage superficial or in-depth?
- Example of a current, broad-coverage site:
Raleigh News and Observer Online
More Help in Evaluating Web Sites
Back to "How to Evaluate Web Sites--FYS Web Evaluation Exercise" page
Last updated August 25, 2005
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