Evaluation for Literary Research
This handout establish criteria for evaluating print and web sources in the
literary research process.
Overview
First we need to establish criteria for evaluating works of criticism in general.
When reading research materials in the library, some materials present themselves
as more effective sources for academic papers than others in terms of timeliness,
authoritative content, and audience.
- Timeliness: A book or journal article written in the 90s will work
from different cultural assumptions than one written in the 50s, thus coming
to different interpretations of and conclusions about the work.
- Authoritative Content: A book by a well-known scholar and a reputable
press may be more thorough and reliable than a magazine or newspaper article;
a university web site on a particular author or work of literature may be
more comprehensive and critical than a fan site or a publisher's website.
- Audience Addressed: A book review has different goals and thus a
different audience than a journal article or book. Similarly, a university
web page has different goals and different audience from fan sites and from
publisher sites.
Print Sources
The best sources of scholarly criticism and interpretation in print are books
and journals. Book reviews in magazines and newspapers provide general
overviews; however, for the most part, they do not offer sustained analytical
readings. Ask yourself these questions in order to evaluate the usefulness and
validity of the piece's interpretation.
- Who, in your opinion, is the reading's intended audience and what interpretation
does theselection want this audience to believe? As a first impression, is
the argument convincing?
- What is the paper's thesis, in other words, how does the author interpret
the primary text? Is the line of argument and other logic effective?
- Does the piece provide evidence for its reading of the primary text?
Is that evidence valid and credible?
- Does the secondary work help you to understand the primary text? Does
it illuminate the text in some way?
Web Sources
When evaluating a web page, it is important to identify the credibility of
the page from the start. Looking at things such as author, content, and appearance
help you to determine exactly what sort of page you're looking at. While
many pages may look good (using fancy logos and images), the page may not necessarily
be credible.
These questions start out the same as those evaluating a print source but they
go beyond questions of interpretation and evidence because reading web pages
for scholarly purposes is a somewhat new process and because web sources are
to a greater extent self-published and thus generally don't undergo the degree
of peer review that print sources do, save possibly for university sites.
Another way to think of this is: because an author has to prove her theories
to many people to get published, readers can safely assume a certain level of
authority and validity when evaluating a scholarly journal or book. But
any anonymous bozo can publish a web site; therefore, the researcher must be
more weary when initially investigating a site.
First Impressions
- Who, in your opinion, is the page's intended audience and what does the
page want this audience to believe? As a first impression, does the page convince
you to believe?
- What is the page's purpose? Is it trying to sell a book, an author, or the
page's author? Is it deisgned as a study guide for students, or does it give
a full-fledged scholarly intepretation? Or is it simply a fan site? In other
words, Is this a fan site, a publisher's site, a scholarly site, or some blend
of the three?
- How does the author interpret the primary text, if indeed she does so? Is
the line of argument and other logic effective? Does the piece provide evidence
for its reading of the primary text? Is that evidence valid and credible?
- Does the secondary work help you to understand the primary text? Does
it illuminate the text in some way?
Trustworthy Authorship and Affiliation
- Who created the page?
- Did the same person write the text (or can you tell)?
- Is the page affiliated with any sort of university, company, or other organization?
- What are the last three letters of the first segment of the URL? (EDU:
education, ORG: organization, GOV: government, COM: commerical) Based on who
created the page, the company it's affiliated with, and what the URL can tell
you about what kind of organization houses the page, how much do you trust
the information on the page and why?
- Visit some of the external links offered on the page and note the sites
you visit. If the page you are reading is associating itself with these sites,
what do these associations make you think of the page's credibility?
Overall Evaluation
Comparison of Print
and Web Sources
- What kind of information and interpretation does the print source provide?
How does that compare with the sort of information given by the web site?
- Given the above criteria, which source--print or web--proves more helpful
in constructingan understanding of the primary text?
- In your evaluation, what inquiries would the print source prove useful in
researching? the web source?