University of Washington Project to Make Internet Searches More Credible
SEATTLE
A new project at the University of Washington in collaboration with Syracuse University is aimed at addressing what is perhaps the most difficult problem in evaluating information gathered on the Internet: credibility.
Dr. Michael Eisenberg, professor and dean emeritus at the UW Information School, will be working with Dr. David Lankes, associate professor of Syracuse University to create what they are calling the “Credibility Commons.” The Commons is envisioned as a place where researchers can come together to develop ideas for improving the credibility of Internet searches and Web information. It is also envisioned as a location for making different Web search tools and collections available to the public to raise awareness regarding issues of credibility of the information that is retrieved.
“One question we intend to address is whether there are ways to automatically sift and sort information to help people who are performing searches to gather the most credible information,” Eisenberg says. “Most popular searches that people use simply rank sites based on how many Internet links they have — in other words, how popular they are. This tells the searcher nothing about whether the information there is authoritative, documented, complete or unbiased.”
The UW Information School hosted a conference a year ago, sponsored by the American Library Association’s Office of Information Technology Policy with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, in which credibility of Internet information was the major theme. This is particularly a problem for students, who rely increasingly on the Internet for most if not all of their information when they are writing papers. A study conducted by researchers at Colorado State University revealed that, just 27 percent of 500 Web sites used by Colorado high school students to conduct research were judged as reliable.
This is not just an academic issue, Eisenberg says. “We know that more than 80 percent of high school students turn to the Internet first when they do research. People use the popular search engines because they are easy to use. Our goal is to develop tools that are equally easy, but also establish criteria for returning information that is highly credible.”
