Choosing Dependable Information
In the quest to stay up-to-date in your field or industry, it is important to evaluate the information sources you read. The following guidelines are taken from Integrating Information Literacy into the Engineering Design Process (http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks/31/), Purdue University Press, 2014, edited by Michael Fosmire and David Radcliffe. See Chapter 11, "Make Dependable Decisions," by Jeremy Garritano.
Consider these Guidelines when Evaluating Sources:
Authority: What are the qualifications of the author? What is their role in the research? Are they sponsored by an organization?
Accuracy: Are the claims in the research supported by the wider literature?
Objectivity: Does the author have a bias, or does the publisher?
Currency: When was the research done? When was it published?
Scope/Depth/Breadth: Is the research applicable to the design problem? Has it been tested in the specific situation?
Intended Audience/Level of Information: Who is the intended audience of the research? Is the research over-simplified?
Google Alerts and Google Scholar Alerts
Google Alerts (https://www.google.com/alerts) allows you to receive regular emails of new web content corresponding to your search. You may specify the type of content, such as web pages, videos, books, etc.
Similarly you may set up an alert within Google Scholarl (http://scholar.google.com) to receive notifications about scholarly publications retrieved by a search. First sign in with your Google account information.
