Knowing what and how much to write down is sometimes difficult. Rely on some of the following tips for what to include in your notes.

• Details, facts, or explanations that expand or explain the main points that are mentioned
• Don’t forget examples
• Definitions, word for word
• Lists of things that are discussed
• Material written on the board, including drawings or charts
• Information that is repeated or spelled out

Before even looking at a website’s content, you should notice the site’s top-level domain. For sites based in the U.S., these will usually be one of the following: .com, .org, .net, .mil, .gov, .edu. Non-U.S. sites will often have a TLD denoting their country of origin, for instance .au for Australia, although people from any country can purchase .com, .org and .net domain names.

Traditionally, .com denotes a commercial entity, .org means a nonprofit organization, and .net is a network (for instance, an Internet service provider). In practice, anyone can purchase a .com, .org or .net domain name, and individuals often buy a .org or .net domain when their preferred .com is not available. However, it is still true that many nonprofit organizations will avoid .com domains so as to avoid implying that they have a commercial component. It’s also true that, while not all .coms are commercial, all large commercial organizations will have .com addresses.

The .gov, .mil and .edu TLDs can only go to government, military and educational sites, so they reflect a different order of authority from a .com or a .org. Students and faculty can both have personal websites with .edu TLDs, so be aware of whether the site is an official school website, a research site or a personal site. Personal sites will often have the user’s name in the URL. Information on a .gov or .mil site has the backing of the (local, state or federal) government or the military. It may be difficult to find a single author for these sites, but you can assume that the information has a certain amount of authority because of this association. This does not necessarily mean that information on these sites is true – for instance, in 2005, the sex education website 4parents.gov was found to make a number of incorrect assertions and omit important information. But it does mean that the government or military tacitly approves of the site. If nothing else, .gov and .mil sites can be counted upon to reflect the views of the government.

Some domains, such as wordpress.org and blogspot.com, exist to give free platforms to anyone with something to say. Websites hosted on one of these domains are less credible than other sites, because they are available to anyone (unlike, for instance, a page on NYTimes.com). Their information is not necessarily false, but should be approached with more caution.

For credible online sources start by searching Lunder Libraries online site at: http://www.kvcc.me.edu/Pages/Library/Library-Home