Chapter 5

Chapter 5 - Evaluating Sources
Evaluate relevance to determine whether a sources information will help you accomplish your writing goals and address your readers needs, interests, values and beliefs
Evaluate evidence
- Is there enough
- Is it the right kind
- Is it used fairly
- Are their sources provided for evidence
Evaluate author
- Are they knowledgeable
- What are their affiliations
- How do their biases effect information, ideas, and arguments
Evaluate Publisher
- Where is more information on the publisher in question
- How do their biases effect information, ideas and arguments
Evaluate Timeliness - Does the publication effect the reliability of the sources information
Evaluate comprehensiveness
Evaluate Genre - Consider genre in your decisions about sources
- Style of writing
- How evidence is used
- Is it organized
- Citation style
- Document design
Evaluate relevance and credibility of digital sources such as websites and blogs, social networking sites, email lists, discussion forums, wikis
Evaluate relevance and accuracy of field sources
Use Evaluation to trim a working Bibliography

This Chapter is very important because whether a person chooses relevant credible sources for their paper can be a huge determining factor in how well they did. Knowing how to evaluate sources will be useful for creating a final works cited from my working bibliography and for determining which sources I will use primarily. Using only the best sources that I have evaluated will help me do a better job picking out evidence, information, and arguments that address my goals and my readers needs, interests, values and beliefs.