Assignment Directions This week, you have one assignment to complete. Select the

Assignment Directions
This week, you have one assignment to complete. Select the button below the assignment to access detailed instructions and to submit your work.
Due the last day of the academic week by 11:59 pm ET
Assignment Description
There is a great deal of information available on the internet and you can do a lot of research from your computer. However, not everything on the web is acceptable for academic use. This assignment will help you evaluate websites that you find on the free web.
What is an Annotated Webliography?
An annotated webliography is different from the annotated bibliography which you completed in Week 4. Instead of reviewing and analyzing specific books and articles, this assignment requires you to review websites pertaining to a particular topic, and to evaluate the website for its suitability for academic use. Websites will be evaluated in four specific areas:
Who is the author of the Web site?
Does the Web site present information that is biased, one-sided?
Does the Web site present accurate information?
Is the Web site current enough for your research topic?
To fully understand what to consider in each of these areas, complete the tutorial at https://sites.umgc.edu/library/libhow/websiteevaluation_tutorial.cfm before you start your paper.
Sometimes people confuse a web address with being the same as a website. This is not the case. Articles from journals or websites are NOT websites. Make sure you are clear as to what a website is. For example, msn.com, yahoo.com, or bbc.com are websites. Articles contained within them are not.
Assignment Instructions
Identify a topic or thesis relevant to this course. It is a good idea to use the same one as your annotated bibliography assignment, since you are already familiar with the subject.
Then, search for five (5) websites which may be acceptable for use in a college-level history research paper. Do NOT use Wikipedia, History.com or any other encyclopedia or wiki-type site like about.com or sites that require a paid subscription.
Remember that you are evaluating the website, so you may only use each one once.
Write a paragraph of 200-250 words for each website for each website to evaluate the website utilizing the criteria you learn from the library tutorial. Then specifically state whether you think that the website is or is not acceptable for academic use and why.
Examples of websites which are, and are not acceptable for use are found below. These are notional, inoperative website reviews.
Assignment Format:
Begin by stating your topic or thesis.
Provide a complete citation (as you would include it in your bibliography) for the site, including the URL and your date of access. Note that the required style for this class is Chicago Manual of Style. For an example of what elements to include in your citation, go to Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition examples.
For each website, use the evaluation criteria provided by the Library Services tutorial to determine if the site is or is not appropriate for college-level academic research (i.e. a college-level history research paper). Submit the paper in MS Word or docx format.
The grading rubric is available at the end of these instructions.
If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to ask. You have three ways to do this: 1) Post a question in this week’s discussion; 2) Post a question in the Ask the Professor module; or 3) Directly email your instructor at xxx.xxx@faculty.umgc.edu.
Additionally, some websites are not considered suitable for college-level research, please find a list of the most common websites that are unacceptable for college-level work:
LIST OF UNACCEPTABLE WEB RESOURCES: AVOID THESE WEB SITES
For profit, commercialized sites that sell advertisements;
Private web resources were you can find nothing substantive about the author or the political philosophy or the private funding source;
The History Channel or any A&E Television material;
History.com or the Independence Hall Association (for profit)
Encyclopedia.com: it is a commercialized site that “uses” information from accredited sources. Go to the UMGC Library and ask the Librarian to help you find the relevant Oxford Companion to Historyseries.
Britannica.com: See above. It sells ads and “uses” information from other sources.
About.com: not professional; commercialized;
History.org: a commercialized site;
HistoryNet.com: sells magazines;
YouTube, “home-made videos.” If the video comes from a scholarly source, it is acceptable.
Alpha History.
Annotated Webliography