Many think of the study of library science as being a simple matter of reading many books. Card catalogs. Those are stereotypes of years gone by. Yet, the excitement of being conferred a master of library and information science goes far beyond four letters, M.L.I.S., a cap and gown, a diploma, marvelous pictures, and a wonderful celebration. Not to diminish any of those five is a window into how to mine for information--how to conduct a treasure hunt for information.
The first step in assessing the veracity of information is to identify the type of website on which the information appears. Wikis are subject to being edited by any individual without disclosure of who the author of the information was. Blogs are web logs--diaries--published by individuals.
Other types of websites may be identified by virtue of their domain. We are vulnerable to being unable to assess online information without identifying the different types of domains.
Domain extensions are identified by a non-profit organization known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The original intent of the World Wide Web by its creator, Tim Berners-Lee, was to provide a forum for the free exchange of information across the world. While the ICANN exists to establish standardized names of websites, the World Wide Web Consortium exists to regulate how information is presented on the Internet digitally. Both organizations are dedicated to preserving the stability of the Internet, so that the free exchange of information may occur.
The most common domain with the widest usage are as follows: .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .mobi, .nato, .net, and org. There are other domain extensions, but, these are the most commonly used extensions.
The extension with the greatest variety of content--is .com. The .com domain stands for commercial. The .edu domain is assigned to educational institutions,primarily. There may be educational institutions that do not use the .edu. However, the .edu domain is not used by other individuals, or groups. The .gov domain names are used by government institutions in the United States. Similarly, the .int extension is used by international organizations. The .mil extension is used by websites of U.S. military institutions. The .mobi extension is reserved for websites intended for use by mobile phones. The .nato extension is reserved for websites authored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]. The .org domain extension is used by organizational units on the Internet. Oftentimes, this is thought of as charitable, or non-profit organizations. However, that is not always the case. In genealogy research I have done, I have found websites of U.S. localities, which contain the .org extension. So, although the extensions I have listed have specific topical, or organizational meanings intended, it would be a misnomer to imply that only the organizations described used the specific domain extensions.
Beyond the organic domain extensions, there is a multitude of extensions used to identify the country of the online data. For example, .uk distinguishes websites with information from the United Kingdom. There are 245 country-specific domain extensions. The difficulty in navigating such websites is knowledge of foreign languages. Each country domain contains data in the country's native language. The Google Chrome browser does enable an individual to have the website data, which has been keyed, to be translated. An individual needs to be wary of the quality of the translation. I am not condemning Google translations. Rather, this is a consideration to be added to the factors involved in assessing the veracity of online data.
Exploring the origins of the International Women's Day inspired my consideration of assessing veracity of information. Learning that Bulgaria is among the countries that celebrates International Women's Day as a national holiday led me to the Bulgarian News Agency [BTA] http://www.bta.bg/en/page/79/About_BTA website. A list of links to global news agencies on the BTA website caught my attention. I am impressed by the commitment to free access to information that that list implies. I pray my impress-ion shall not cloud me from corruption of the truth, wherever it may occur. I do want to remain open to my belief that truth may exist --is possible--anywhere, from anyone's mouth.
No comments:
Post a Comment