Be a Critical Consumer of Information

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Anyone can post material on the Web, and with a little bit of design savvy, make it look professional. Determining the accuracy of online content is not always so easy. Search engines such as Google cannot discern the quality of information; only a human editor can do this. Each time you examine a document, especially one that has not been evaluated by credible editors, ask yourself, “Who put this information here, and why did they do so? What are the source’s qualifications? Where is similar information found? When was the information posted, and is it timely?” (See “From Source to Speech: Evaluating Web Sources”).