The Internet

              The Internet is a collection of interconnected computers which are linked together and which share information.  It has often been called the Information Highway.  This association of interconnected computers contains billions upon billions upon billions of bits of data.

              In just a few years, the Internet has grown into the largest and fastest information sharing network of the world.  Until the creation of the Internet, students found information in books, journals, newspapers, reference books, etc.  All of these sources had the same thing in common; they were printed on paper and mostly collected and shelved in libraries.  All too often, the information students needed was not stored in the library they were in.  No one library was large enough or rich enough to have everything students needed to know about anything. 

              The writing and publishing of information on paper is a slow process.  By the time most books are published, the information often is a year or more old.  Journals and other scholarly periodicals are published more often than books, but they too take time to write and print, often three or more months.

              Not only does the Internet contain the largest database of information ever imagined, but it also is available worldwide, 24 hours a day, and it is not place bound; in other words, students don't have to sit at  long tables in the library.  They can do work wherever they have a connection to the Internet.  Once connected, the world is at their fingertips, instantaneously.

              There are other upsides to the Internet which are obvious and won't be discussed here.    There are also downsides to the Internet.  Creating web sites is easy and inexpensive.  Anyone can create and publish information on the Internet.  Therefore, not all web sites are created equal--some are good, factual sources of new information; other are not.  Web sites come and go, often disappearing because a teacher or student changed jobs or finished school.  Some just hang around without maintenance and become outdated. 

    Evaluation of Internet Sources

              Since anyone can publish on the Internet, students doing research must become critical evaluators of data.  The Internet is free from censorship or quality control students can completely depend upon.  In the print world, book, journal, newspaper, and magazine publishers staked their reputations on what they printed.  On the Internet, many of these assurances no longer exist.  This means everyone must learn new ways of evaluating material for its accuracy, timeliness, and quality. The first place to look to evaluate for accuracy is at the Uniform Resource Locator (URL).   A URL is an Internet address.  The address of the computer is the part of the URL to the left of the slash--www.crk.umn.edu/.   The path is the name of the file, folder, or directory of the  resource accessed.  The path is to the right of the first slash in the URL--/news/people.htm.

              The Internet address of a URL always contains a suffix, a domain--alt, arts, com, comp, edu, firm, gov, mil, net , nom, org,  rec, store or web.  (The domains comp, firm, nom, rec, store, and web are currently proposed and are being considered.)

      alt -- is a Usenet newsgroup domain.  Anyone can join a newsgroup and express his or her opinion.,

      arts -- is a proposed new domain for web sites dealing with the arts.

      com -- is a commercial domain.

      comp -- is a Usenet newsgroup domain.

      edu -- is an educational institution domain.

      firm -- is a proposed new domain for online companies.

      gov -- is the domain for government Web sites.

      mil -- is the domain for the branches of the military.

      net -- is a provider of access to the Internet.

      nom -- is a proposed new domain for personal web sites.

      org -- is a domain for nonprofit organizations.

      rec -- is a Usenet newsgroup domain.

      store -- is a proposed new domain for online vendors.

      web -- is a proposed new domain for web sites dealing with the web.


              By looking at the domain of  a URL, students can make rough rules of thumb as to what they can expect to find at a site in terms of accuracy and quality.  However, like all rules of thumb, students must be cautious--only one indicator of accuracy and quality is very little assurance that a webpage is accurate and contains world-class quality.  Other factors about Web pages which need evaluation include knowledge of the author, accuracy of the information, the publishing organization, and the date published.

              The following links will provide serious students the critical skills needed to evaluate Internet sources:


              Here is an interesting and fun Web site for serious students to use to to learn to think critically about information on the Internet.  It is also quite possible an instructor may use this resource in class as a project.


              The Internet is vast and growing.  There apparently is no upper limit to the number of computers which can be interconnected and no upper limit as to the amount of information available world wide.  It's a great place to do research, from checking stock prices to finding esoteric information about figures of speech.  While all of this information is available, there are no tables of contents, no road maps, no telephone books, no card catalogs, no address books, and no directories to help students find what they need.  In other words, while  students can find almost anything on the Internet, finding that information is both a craft and an art.

              Fortunately, there are hundreds of search engines available.  There are three types of search engines--spiders, directories, and metasearch engines.  And like almost everything else on the Internet, search engines are not created equal.   Each engine has its particular uses and each his its particular quirks.  The strengths and weaknesses of search engines result in differences in retrievable information.

              Spiders are search engines which automatically crawl the Internet, logging information from millions of sites.  One of the objects of spiders is to be as current as possible.  To use these spiders effectively, students must read the help section of the engines to find out if "apple pie and ice cream" is the way to phrase keywords or to find out if +apple +pie AND +ice +cream is more effective.

              Directories are search engines that present students with a list of topics prepared by editors.  Unlike spiders which use automatic searching software, a human being is involved in the creation of directories.  It does not take students long to discover if the directory lists contain the information they are looking for.

              Many search engines now use both spiders and directories.

              Metasearch engines use other search engines to find information.  Once the information is retrieved from these multiple search engines, it is displayed in a single window.  Metasearch engines also reconcile keyword searching for the researcher.  Sudents only have to enter a keyword/s and the metasearch engine will take care of the different search commands.  The metasearch engine WebFerret is loaded on the computers at UMC.

              The following Web sites are helpful for learning about searching the Internet for resources: