3.1 Evaluating: So What Do I Do With a Results List?

The first point at which you will be evaluating and selecting sources will be when you have completed a search on an online catalog or in a periodicals database. You will need to examine each entry in your results to see if it is likely to meet your needs. This will be a preliminary decision subject to a more complete evaluation later.

The first criteria you will use will be usefulness and relevance. From a results list you will have the title of the book or article, often access to a summary or abstract of the item, and a list of subject headings or descriptors that have been applied to that item by the indexers. These bits of information are usually enough to judge if the source addresses the topic you have in mind.

The second main criteria you will apply to items on a results list is timeliness. The results list will usually indicate the publication date for each item, and will usually present the most recent materials first. You should easily be able to apply time standards based on your assignment and the nature of your topic.

Judging the appropriateness and authoritativeness of an item on a results list is more difficult. The main evidence you have would be the reputation of the publisher (for a book) or the periodical (for an article). You are probably already familiar with the names of publishers and periodicals of general or popular materials. Some credible publishers include Random House, Simon and Schuster, Harper, and Doubleday. Reputable periodicals and magazines include Newsweek, Time, Atlantic Monthly, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated; the sort of magazines you might see at an airport or drugstore newsstand, but not the sort you see at the supermarket checkout line.

For scholarly materials, you can look for the names of universities or professional associations as publishers. With the names of periodicals, you can look for words like journal, quarterly, research, or review, usually coupled with the name of a relevant subject discipline. Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Bacteriology, Philosophical Review and Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly are examples of scholarly periodicals.

But these are not hard and fast rules. A part of your college education will include becoming familiar with the publishers and journals that produce important work in a particular subject area. You should also remember that you can pre-select for appropriate and authoritative materials to some degree when selecting a database. PsychINFO for instance indexes mainly research literature in psychology, and InfoTrac OneFile indexes general magazines and selected scholarly journals from several disciplines. The Penfield Library catalog includes books that have been screened and specifically chosen in part for how appropriate and authoritative the item is. But the range of students we serve is so broad, you cannot assume that an item is okay for you just because it is on our shelf.