How To Find Background Info On Book Author

six-Evaluating Sources

Author and Publisher

A seal of approval — The reputation of the writer and publisher influences your confidence in a source.

You'll always desire to know who'due south providing the information for a website or other source. Do they have the education, preparation, or other experience that make you recall they are government on the subject covered? Or exercise they just have opinions?

The more you know about the author and/or publisher, the more confidence you tin can accept in your decision for or confronting using content from that source.

Authors and publishers can be individuals or organizations, including companies. (Web masters put things on the site but exercise not unremarkably decide what goes on all but the smallest websites. They ofttimes merely carry out others' decisions.)

Sites that practise non place an writer or publisher are generally considered less credible for many purposes, including for term papers and other high-stakes projects. The same is true for sources in other formats.

Clues About an Author'southward and/or Publisher'south Groundwork

If they're available, kickoff accept a look at pages called such things as Most This Site, About Us, or Our Squad first. But you may need to browse around a site further to determine its author. Look for a link labeled with annihilation that seems like information technology would lead you lot to the writer. Other sources, like books, usually have a few sentences well-nigh the author on the dorsum encompass or on the flap inside the back comprehend.

You may notice the publisher's name next to the copyright symbol, ©, at the bottom of at least some pages on a site. In books the identity of the publisher is traditionally on the back of the title page.

Sometimes it helps to look for whether a site belongs to a single person or to a reputable arrangement. Considering many colleges and universities offer blog space to their faculty, staff, and students that uses the university'due south web domain, this evaluation can crave deeper analysis than just looking at the address. Personal blogs may not reflect the official views of an arrangement or meet the standards of formal publication.

In a similar mode, a tilde symbol (~) preceding a directory proper name in the site address indicates that the page is in a "personal" directory on the server and is not an official publication of that organization. For example, you could tell that Jones' spider web page was not an official publication of XYZ University if his site'south address was: http://www.XYZuniversity.edu/~jones/page.html. The tilde indicates it's just a personal web folio—in the Residences, not Schools, neighborhood of the web.

Unless you detect information about the author to the reverse, such blogs and sites should not automatically be considered to have as much potency as content that is officially part of the academy'south site. Or you may find that the writer has a good academic reputation and is using their blog or website to share resource he or she authored and even published elsewhere. That would nudge him or her toward the Schools neighborhood.

Learning what they have published earlier can besides help you decide whether that organization or individual should be considered apparent on the topic. Listed beneath are sources to use to look for what the arrangement or individual may have published and what has been published virtually them.

Tip: Discover Out What the Writer (Person or System) Has Published

Library Catalogs – Search in a large library catalog to find books written past the writer.

For instance:

OSU Library Catalog Link
OhioLINK
WorldCat@OSU

Web Article Database – Utilize a free web article database to search for manufactures past the author. Annotation: While you can search for free, you may not be able to think articles unless searching through a library.

For case:

Google Scholar
MagPortal.com

Specialized Database – Locate articles written by the writer by using a specialized database that covers the same topical area as information on the website. Check your library's website to find databases that you can apply for this purpose. (Such databases are also called periodical indexes.)

For example:

Utilise ERIC (OSU users but) to locate whatsoever articles published by the author of an education website.

Tip: Find Out What Has Been Written About The Writer

Web Search Engine – Use a search engine to observe web pages where the author's name is mentioned. (Be sure to search for the name as a phrase, equally in "Jane Doe")

For example:

Google
Yippy

Total-Text Commodity Database – Use a database that searches the full-text of articles (non merely descriptive information nearly the article) to detect those that mention people and organizations.

For case:

Academic Search Complete (OSU simply)
LexisNexis Bookish (OSU only)

Specialized Biographical Sources – Utilize directories and indexes provided past your library to find backgrounds of people.

For example:

Biography Reference Bank (OSU only)

Making the Inference

Consider the clues. Then determine the extent that the source'south writer and/or publisher is acceptable for your purpose. It might aid to form the extent that this factor contributes to the site being suitable on a scale like this one:

A – Very Acceptable
B – Good, but could be ameliorate
C – OK in a pinch
D – Marginal
F – Unacceptable

You lot'll want to make a annotation of the source'south grade for author and/or publisher so you can combine it later with the grades y'all requite the other factors.