Module 4: Evaluating the Web

For this task I chose to concentrate on Lee Ratzan's paper on the Internet as a metaphor. I found it to be of some use when trying to wrap my head around the idea of the metaphorical concept of the Internet.

• URL http://informationr.net/ir/6-1/paper85.html
• AUTHOR Lee Ratzan
• INSTITUTION Making Sense of the Web: A Metaphorical Approach
  
• This paper is dedicated to the Internet Metaphor Project. A research into using metaphors to describe the Internet and how it affects us as users. It is focused on the way in which we find out how, what advanced and basic Internet users describe the Internet as. The real information is in the last section of the paper where Lee Ratzan concludes his findings and opens them up for discussion. The content overall is informative and useful. A clinical and fact driven paper for the Rutger's University that is more for those who like a numbers based survey type reference.

I thought that this source was reliable in that Lee Ratzan is represented by the School of Communication, Information and Library studies which is part of Rutger's University, New Brunswick. Jersey, USA. You can click on his name on the site and it allows you to send him a personal email. The article looks to be part of a series with the Information Research, Vol. 6 No. 1. October 2000 stated at the top of the page.

The main ideas and subjects discussed in the article are quoted below. The Internet Metaphor Project presents specific results within this article. Statistics and graphs feature heavily and the article is result based.

The nature of the World Wide Web is unfamiliar to most people. In order to make sense of this foreign environment people describe the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar. Metaphors are often used for this purpose. Since it is important to use the Web effectively it is important to acquire insight on user perceptions. Preliminary results of the Internet Metaphor Project are presented.

The article was written for the purpose of the Internet Metaphor Project. A project that focuses on Internet metaphors, what metaphors are most common for what level of Internet user and whether the gender of that user comes into play. Does the use of a metaphor contribute to confusing people about what it is the Internet actually does. Lee Ratzans interest in this topic is purely for research purposes within the university.


My annotated, analytical description of the site as written above would be beneficial to many. The information is a thorough and concise overview of what is contained in the site and states the general content matter and the credibility of the source.

All I really want to know when accessing a site however is whether the author is credible and the content useful. This would be obvious to me with just the blurb I wrote on the site in the previous post (re-posted at the top for easy access) however maybe that is because I wrote it. If I were to visit a site that I was unfamiliar with and got a small blurb on the content and a brief outline of the author, I would be prompted to further investigate the site.