Scholarly vs Non-scholarly
Non-Scholarly
http://people.umass.edu/velleman/cas.html
Even though this website is a .edu, it is a link off a faculty/staff website. It is a letter to parents explaining childhood apraxia of speech. The website uses very general information with no citations. The website does not provide a date of publication, nor does it state when it was last updated. I was able to view the homepage of the faculty/staff member. The homepage was able to identify the author for me; however, I noticed the author cited a list of selected publication, which her name appeared numerous times.
Scholarly
http://search.asha.org/query.html?col=ebp&col=journals&col=policy&qt=childhood+apraxia+of+speech&charset=iso-8859-1
This website is scholarly because it is from the national accredited organization entitled the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. All speech-language pathologist and audiologist around the United States recognize the information on this website. The above website is the link to the search page. This website was able to give me the author’s names, dates of publications, and online, scholarly journals where articles can be found. All material on the ASHA website has been approved to be published by a committee. The search results published on this website are results from published journals. I feel this website answers all of the wh- questions about how to evaluate a source. When doing research in my discipline, you always start with ASHA.
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You’re right not to be fooled by .edu. Sometimes students’ sites have a .edu; they are no more of an expert on a topic than you are, right?
It’s important to do as you have done and identify THE best web site within your discipline. When I teach Sociology of Education, I always show students the National Center for Educational Statistics web site and tell them to save it as a favorite. There are certain sites that are key or basic to each discipline. Often professional orgainzations are key sites. In family studies, the National Council of Family Relations, NCFR.org, is an important site. It’s always important to keep in mind, however, that organizational web sites often have agendas–even if it’s as benign as promoting the discipline. For example, the National Education Association (NEA) is a good organization for education students to look at; however, they do take very definite stands on many political issues, so the information isn’t always unbiased.