Once you find some sources you need to figure out how reliable they are. An easy acronym to remember when evaluating your materials is CRAAP. The CRAAP test was developed by Sarah Blakeslee and her team of librarians at California State University, Chico to check the reliability of resources. CRAAP looks at Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose to tell whether or not your source is useful.- Currency: It is important to know if the information you have is the most up-to-date information available, and if it isn’t does that matter to your project. Is more recent information accessible such as new artifacts or additional interpretations of older finds?
- Relevance: We live in a world with a readily available over-abundance of information. It is often necessary to weed through a lot of irrelevant information to find things that focus on your specific topic. With historical research it is also just as likely that relevant information will be very scarce and difficult to find. You need to have a good idea of the kind of information you are searching for in order to have any hope of finding it.
- Authority: Who is the author and what is their background? Are they qualified to speak on the subject? Who is the publisher? Is it a reputable publisher or a peer reviewed journal? Are sources referenced and cited throughout? Finally, is contact information for the author or publisher readily available?
- Accuracy: Just because the author has the education and experience to present a topic, that does not mean their information is accurate. Has the information been reviewed by other experts in the field before publication (peer review)? Is there evidence to support the information and can it be verified? Lastly, is the work free of spelling, grammatical, and typographical errors? Carelessness in mechanics can lead to questions about the overall accuracy of the information.
- Purpose: What was the author’s purpose in writing the information? What type of publication published it? A journal aimed at medical professionals will have a slightly different spin than one aimed at research scientists, even for the very same topic. The type of article also needs to be taken into consideration as an informational piece should be viewed in a different light than a persuasive piece. The author’s gender, race, class, religion, culture, occupation, etc. can also have a bearing how and why the information is being presented.
Finally, a special note on foreign language sources. Due to biases and other influencing factors, it is especially important to be critical when using sources translated from other languages. It is recommended that you use more than one translation, as depending on the translator the information can be very different from one version to the next.