Web
Sources
Audience: Anyone
who has access to the Internet.
Content: All
subjects, including scholarly and popular.
Purpose: To
inform; advocate on behalf of an idea, cause, or point
of view; entertain; promote or sell products or services;
showcase the writer's talents, interests, etc.
Writers: Anyone
who is inclined to put material on the Web. Authors are
people from all walks of life who may have very little
education or be well educated.
Timeliness: Varies
from one site to another. Can be very current; in fact,
on some sites events are reported as they occur. Some sites
are updated, but many are not.
Advantages:
The Web provides material that would
be difficult or impossible to get otherwise, documents from
special collections that have been digitized and the material
available on corporate and government home pages, to cite two
examples. In
addition, it is the most current source of information on many
topics, including news, stock quotes (as well as other statistics),
and sports scores, for example. Moreover, the Web allows users
the very useful capability of linking to related
material on other sites. Finally,
all material on the free Web is available in full text.
Disadvantages:
Unlike
material in other sources, information on the Web is not organized
in any fashion and can, therefore, be difficult to find. In
addition, anyone can create a Web site. Unlike most print sources,
Web sites do not undergo any evaluation process, and nobody
oversees this publishing medium. As a result, there is a great
deal of erroneous (or at best misleading), tasteless, and even
offensive material on the Web. Finally, the Web is cluttered
wih a great deal of commercial material.
To
learn more about the Web, go to Section
Six of the tutorial.
