Final exam

Deep web: Article "Distad, M. (2011). The Future of Print: The Book. Feliciter, 57(5), 182-184" found on the EBSCOhost database which I used through the Clark Library.

Authority -- The article's author Merrill Distad is an author, editor and librarian.
Sources -- Published by Canadian Library Association without visible sources of information.
Purpose -- The author's opinion is that hard-copy material is here to stay.
Evenness -- The article reflect's the author's aforementioned opinion.
Coverage -- I don't see how it applies to this article.
Timeliness -- Article published in 2011.
Overall the article meets the ASPECT criteria for credibility. The author is clearly qualified to write on the topic. The article is recent and the author uses statistics and data to back-up his points. 

Open web: Article "Morrison, E. (2011, August 22). Are books dead, and can authors survive? The Guardian." found on guardiannews.com using a search of the site.

Authority -- The article's author Ewan Morrison has written of four novels.
Sources -- The author includes separate articles through links in his article.
Purpose -- Ewan Morrison is of the opinion that e-books will soon make hard-copy material and writers themselves obsolete.
Evenness -- The article is opinion based, so it has a clear bias towards the author's opinion.
Coverage -- I don't see how it applies to this article.
Timeliness -- Article was published in August 2011.
Much like the first article, the author is highly credible and the statistics, data and other evidence in the article are backed-up by external links. I would say it meets the ASPECT criteria.

Article summary:
I agree with the article's points that with the boom of e-books and online news, hard-copy materials like books, magazines, journals and newspapers may become obsolete. But it seems a bit far fetched to assume that the role of the writer would be affected by that transition. The author argues that the internet will force those who write an article to offer their work for little-to-no cost, making writing an impossible thing to make a profession out of.

But what about screenwriters and journalists, do they not qualify as writers? Movies as a medium has benefited from the technology boom, and the writers of those productions will surely benefit. Internet newspapers like The Huffington Post are rivaling their print counterparts like The New York Times and the Washington Post by offering their articles exclusively online for free. For revenue, internet newspapers use the technique used by their print counterparts, they advertise. The writers for that site are doing just fine it seems.

I would say that the most compelling argument offered by the author would be that there is a shift from printed materials to e-books and websites. This has been seen most recently with the announcement by The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, Louisiana that they would be moving most of their articles online. I can agree that writers may have to struggle as a result to a transition from print to digital, but they will survive. And I'm pretty sure that "struggle" isn't anything new to writers.

Create a Web Page

http://letteraday.org/students/bhalvorsen.html

This activity was really fun and by far the most challenging so far. For the body of the web page, I used an article I have been working on about St. Johns City Hall. I added the picture with the help of this how-to page: www.w3schools.com/html/html_images.asp

The takeaway from this activity is a clearer understand of what .html is and how to write a basic web page.

Finding Information on the Open Web and summary

.gov: Searched "censorship AND law" on Google.
"Obscenity, Indecency and Profanity". Federal Communication Commission. FCC.gov. Web 10 June 2012.
This site is an official government site about current US censorship laws. The FCC has the authority to write about the subject. Evenness is not inherently assumed since the FCC has interests in laws. But their purpose is clearly to keep regulated communication in the U.S. censored (to a limited extent).

.edu: Searched "censorship AND history" on Google.
Ickovic, Caleb; Lane, Cristina; Jones, Martha. "Censorship in China". Duke University. Duke.edu. 12 April 2006. Web. 10 June 2012.
The sources cited under the article's "references" section is thorough, although they do cite Wikipedia. The article takes a balanced approach at Chinese censorship laws, giving it evenness. It was published in 2006, giving it some date, but can still be considered timely. 


.com: Searched "censorship AND history" on Google.
Head, Tom. "Censorship in the United States" About.com. Web. 10 June 2012.
The author is a civil liberties writer for About.com giving him the authority to write about the topic. The purpose of the site is to offer encyclopedic article about various topics.

.org: Searched "censorship AND history" on Google.
Newth, Mette. "The Long History of Censorship". Beacon for Freedom of Expression. Web 10 June 2012.
The organization's purpose is to offer a database of articles on censorship. Because of their mission, their article on the history of censorship gives them the authority on the topic. 




I would suggest the .com or .edu domains when searching for information like this. Searching .gov can get some results, but for a historical perspective it doesn't offer much. There are several scholarly articles under .edu domains. I don't think that the domain means much when it comes to evaluating sources. The best way is to use the ASPECT.

Research Journal, Part 8: Types of Information: Focus on Search Engines and Web Sites

Search tool: Gigablast has advanced search features that include allowing you to search an exact phrase, "all of these words", and "none of these words". A unique function is that you can restrict certain URLs and list URLs you want.

Metasearch tool:  All five of the features Gigablast had are included in Metacrawler. You also have to option to restrict search by language. There is a yellow and white page directory to search.

Subject directories: I used Internet Public Library where  "wildcard" search features included inserting a "?" or "*" in a word. Their example is "b*d could return "bad", "bond", "branded", etc." and  "b??d could return "band", "bond", "baud", etc.". All of the five previous features are also available.