1. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Internet Review Sites.
- Author
-
Cooke, Alison, McNab, Alison, and Anagnostelis, Betsy
- Abstract
In response to the increased use of the Internet for information access and dissemination, and the explosion in the availability of resources which may be of interest to end-users, a number of services are now available which provide access to selected and evaluated resources. Many existing Internet search tools are inadequate due to the high rate of recall, low precision, and a lack of filtering. Consequently, the development of evaluative tools is potentially useful for both end-users and information professionals. This paper discusses and compares a number of sites which seek to select, evaluate, review, or describe networked information sources. The paper looks at an overview of the sites' services, resource selection, level of description, subject classification and organization, and review criteria used. The paper is the result of work carried out by the Organizing Medical Networked Information (OMNI) Advisory Group for Evaluation Criteria which has been looking at a range of services available via the Internet for accessing selected and evaluated medical information sources, and the criteria they use. Internet review services differ greatly in terms of coverage, formality, and intended audience--sites tend to be aimed either at a general audience, covering a broad range of subject areas and produced informally, or specifically at academic and research users and involving the use of formal evaluation criteria, implemented by information professionals or subject experts. URLs (uniform resource locators--Internet addresses) of Internet review services are appended. (Contains 13 references.) (Author/SWC)
- Published
- 1996