Digital Research

The previous exercise in writing the history of Valentine’s Day cards was written only using sources available on Google. Though this is not the traditional methodology of a historian, it has been a useful one to see what the web has to offer and how to judge pages validity. Several problems arose during this exercise that included checking the sources, deciding which sites to use and dealing with contradicting information.

The beauty of the World Wide Web is its accessibility to an endless amount of free information. However, when looking on the web for sources it is difficult to know who the author is or what is there intention. Many sites are created by amateurs or hobbyists, not by professionals. The problem with these sites, including information giants like Wikipedia, “is that you have no idea whether you are reading an established person in the field or someone with an ax to grind.”[1] While searching for information I stumbled upon a site named Squidoo, which is an information site. The site had the same information about Valentine’s Day cards, but no accreditation and lots of advertisements. I chose not to use this site, but students surfing the web might use it as a viable source when in fact the material could be questionable.
Instead of using Wikipedia as my main source, I decided to use a variety of other sites that corroborated information. Sites including, American Greetings, American Heritage Magazine, the American Antiquarian Society and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities were some of the more useful sites. The sites are fairly well known and maintained. Each site lists or acknowledges the author or cooperation that they are affiliated with which is one indicator “to help judge how credible and useful a site will be.”[2]

One of the most frustrating problems that arose was that much of the information that I found would contradict itself. For example, when trying to find out how many Valentine’s Day cards were sent each year I came up with four different statistics on Wikipedia and the U.S. Census Bureau. I finally decided to use the statistics from American Greeting Card Association, which had the most timely and specific information.

The question remains, “should we continue to turn our attention away from growth and towards quality.”[3] A thousand sites with information about Valentine’s Day cards popped up with a simple Google search. Despite the vast amount of information, web surfers must be prepared to take the time out to check the sources, and double, even triple check the information being presented.


[1] The Chronicle of Higher Education “Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?” (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i10/10a03101.htm) 2006.
[2] Robert Harris, Evaluating Internet Research Sources, Virtual Salt (http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm) June 2007.
[3] The Chronicle of Higher Education “Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?” (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i10/10a03101.htm) 2006.