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Communication Sources:  A Selected Bibliography: Evaluating the Sources You've Found

Evaluating Information
The research you do for your independent study projects will only be as good as the sources you choose and the efforts you take to analyze those sources critically. The Evaluating Information lesson in the Five Colleges of Ohio Libraries Information Literacy Tutorial contains a helpful overview on several things to consider when evaluating the sources you've found. This lesson pertains to both print and web resource.

Biography as a Source of Evaluating the Author
Finding biographical information on an author can help in determining whether or not the author is qualified to do they type of research reflected in a particular source you find. Many of the College of Wooster Libraries databases that are found on their Databases by Title web page, especially those databases also listed on the General Databases web page, can be very helpful when looking for biographical information found in magazines and journals. Many web sites provide a quick source of biographical information as well. Such sources as Google's Directory page on Biography and Librarian's Index to the Internet's directory page on People provide useful listings of many sites provinding biographical information.For other ideas for researching biographical information on an author, ask any librarian at the Gault Reference Desk.

Learning More about Associations, Organizations, and Publishers
The Encyclopedia of Associations is a printed directory that the Libraries shelve in the Gault Ready Reference area. It gives you more in-depth information about associations and organizations. It will list key officers, describe the focus of the assocation, give contact information, list the associations major publications, and provide other related information about the association or organization. The Libraries Ready Reference web page on Publishers and Bookstores links to many sites that link to a wide variety of publishers on the internet. In addition, there are many sources in the Libraries Reference collection that provide some publisher descriptions and/or directory information, such as Books In Print, Writer's Market, International Litererary Market Place, to name a few. Just ask a librarian for suggestions, if these don't provide the information you seek.

Evaluating Journals
One method of evaluating a journal article is to evaluate the journal itself. Is it a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal that is very selective in what is publishes? Is it a journal published by a well-known, well-respected association, organization, or publisher? These types of questions can be answered by the guides listed on the Guides and Bibliographies page of this Web bibliography that refer to serials/periodicals/journals.

Evaluating Books
Book reviews are an excellent source of evaluating books, especially if the reviews are in authoritative journals in the field of Communication, Communication Sciences and Disorders, or a related fields. There are many ways to find book reviews. The College of Wooster Libraries provide access to many databases that index book reviews in journals, magazines, and newspapers, all of which are found on the Databases by Title web page. In addition to the Book Review Digest database, those databases that are also listed on the General Databases web page can be particularly useful when searching for book reviews. In the Gault Library Reference Area there are a couple of print indexes useful for finding book reviews as well: Book Review Index and the Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals. On the Web, there are also some bookstores, such as Amazon.com, that provide reviews. Those are listed on the Libraries Ready Reference web page under Publishers and Bookstores.