Searching Out Loud - Unit Three: Sourcing – How to Evaluate Information Quality and Source Information That Instructs

Unit Three focuses on acquiring source fluency and learning how to leverage those sources to improve the quality of the information you source virtually. The Unit starts by confronting the essential form of how information is delivered to us and the questions it inspires: Where is it located? What is it called? When was it done? Who did it? Why do I care? How do I find it again?We can’t possibly know everything and this is no less true for sourcing the world’s knowledge. Committing an inventory of leading references and go-to experts on any subject is too daunting even for the reference librarians. Our goal is not to become librarians but to develop a skill called source fluency. Source fluency ensures that we’re looking in the right place - even when we’re a first-time visitor to unfamiliar topics. We’ll set up a quality control process that not only reduces the search noise that clutters our screens. It also helps us to attract, analyze, and interpret the sources we need to fulfill our project objectives. We’ll develop the quality of our findings on three levels: Search sets, websites, and individual pages (but only the ones worth opening)!