Topic: Egyptian agriculture
search for five websites that may be acceptable for use in a college-level history research paper. ***Do not use Wikipedia, History.com, or any other encyclopedia or a wiki-type site such as about.com or sites that require a paid subscription.***
-Remember that you are evaluating the website, so you may only use each one once. Don’t use multiple pages from a single website.
-Write a paragraph of 200–250 words 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 acceptable for academic use and why. ***You have to review the library tutorial to successfully complete this assignment.***
-Examples of websites that 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 the Chicago Manual of Style. Read this for an example of what elements to include in your citation.
-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.
Assignment Instructions
For this assignment, you will search for five websites that are acceptable for use in a college-level history research paper. PLEASE PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING: UMGC library databases (for example JSTOR or other journal databases), Wikipedia, History.com or any other encyclopedia or wiki-type site like about.com are NOT acceptable, sites that require a subscription are additionally NOT acceptable. Write a paragraph for each website (five total approximately 200-250 words each) in which you describe the contents of each website in detail, and why you think the site is acceptable for use in an academic research paper, using the information you collected from your evaluation of the site.
Complete the following for your annotated webliography:
-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 Examples. You can also click on the Chicago Style Guide Resources module under the Table of Contents to find examples of how to properly cite websites using the Chicago Manual of Style.
-Use the evaluation criteria provided by UMGC Information and Library Services to determine if the site is appropriate for college-level academic research (i.e. a college-level history research paper).
-For guidance, watch the 13 minute Crash Course video on Lateral Reading, which is the ability to cross check a website’s credibility as you are looking for information.
If you would like a transcript, click on the three horizontal dots under the video, and select Open Transcript. The transcript will open to the right of the video.
***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. Any article contained within them are not websites.***
-If your topic is contained within a part of the website then you must still evaluate the website as a whole for its suitability for use in a college level history research paper. You will find a sample Annotated Webliography in the module labeled “Course Resources.” Do not use the websites from the course resources.
-Additionally, some websites are not considered suitable for college-level research. Please find a list below 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 where 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, which 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 History series.
- Britannica.com, which sells ads and uses information from other sources
- About.com, which is not professional and is commercialized
- History.org, a commercialized site
- HistoryNet.com, which sells magazines
- YouTube homemade videos. If the video comes from a scholarly source, it is acceptable.
- Alpha History
