Library Philosophy and Practice - Humanities Websites

In an article in a recent issue of Library Philosophy and Practice, Eileen McElrath explores the question of the value of free websites to students and faculty in the humanities. In a review of the relevant literature, she points out that some research has shown faculty in the sciences having more confidence in the "accuracy and format of the web" than their colleagues in the social sciences or humanities. She notes that undergraduate students, by contrast, have been shown in one study to use online sources at significantly higher rates and have a perception that such sources provide more information more quickly that books or periodicals.

This, of course will come as no surprise either to academic librarians or to teaching faculty. The anecdotal evidence has been before us for about a decade now. The interesting thing about McElrath's article, however, is that it takes recent scholarship on this subject as a point of departure for an analysis of a variety of humanities orientated websites from the standpoint of a set of standards measuring the overall quality, authority, usefulness, and functionality of their content. The standards that she uses are those developed by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of the American Library Association. In 1999, RUSA established a set of 29 criteria by which to judge websites, and each year 25 sites are nominated and the results published in Reference & User Services Quarterly.

McElrath evaluates 20 sites that have been nominated during the period from 1999 - 2005. The result is a kind of annotated bibliography of humanities websites. The conclusion of her analysis is that the RUSA standards do stand up to scrutiny, and that their method of independent evaluation helps to ensure that there are good quality humanities websites that both students and faculty can rely upon.

Like many academic librarians who work with undergraduates doing research assignments, I was glad to see McElrath's work because it represents the type of practical analysis that helps librarians in thinking about both information literacy instruction and outreach to teaching faculty. The problem of blind Internet searching by undergraduate students is one that plagues teaching faculty and librarians alike. This is particularly pronounced in the new period of web 2.0. As the functions of web portals, search engines, social networks and web applications begin to aggregate in synergistic ways, and as more higher quality content becomes available on the Internet, it is not always so easy for students to parse the differences between highly rigorous academic content and well-presented but more superficial fare.

Whether or not the RUSA standards represent a kind of seal of approval remains to be seen. But, clearly, these sorts of ratings are going to become increasingly necessary. This is particularly so because the dominance of the simplified search interfaces like that of Google and other search engines is having an influence over the design of academic databases. In the not too distant future, it may not be possible for the uninitiated user to tell the difference between the look and function of an academic database and a commercial site like About.com.

I, for one, plan to spend more time analysing websites in light of the RUSA standards. In the process, I think that we should also begin to think about ranking some of these sites in more hierarchical ways - that is, with a view to recommending some sites as appropriate to, say, high school and lower-level undergraduates, and others for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers. McElrath makes these kinds of judgments on the appropriate "audience" in her own analysis of the 20 websites in question. This is a great start.