This document discusses evaluating information sources for business courses. It outlines the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. Primary sources are raw materials like annual reports and interviews that are directly related to the topic. Secondary sources are analyses and discussions of primary sources, like scholarly articles. Tertiary sources summarize and synthesize other sources, like textbooks. The document provides guidance on identifying scholarly sources, assessing statistics and visuals, and determining source credibility based on author, date, intended purpose and audience. Students complete activities to find examples of different source types to practice these skills.

1. Evaluating
Information
Sources
for Business courses
by librarian Sarah
Morehouse

2. You are responsible for judging
the quality and reliability
 You need to know that you can trust and
rely on your information.
 Part of that is that the information comes
from a source that you trust.
 But no source is infallible. The other part is
inspecting it carefully and judging it for
yourself.

3. Primary, Secondary and
Tertiary Sources

4. What is a primary source?
 Raw material of research.
 Direct evidence or first hand information
about the event or phenomenon that
you’re researching.
 The data sets, documents, videos,
images, etc. that are the objects of study.

5. Primary sources in business
 Annual reports
 SEC filings
 Stock prices
 Advertising copy
 Press releases
 Internal memos and emails (if you can get
them!)
 Financials
 Correspondence
 Interviews (recordings or transcripts)

6. What is a secondary source?
Second-hand information.
Things written about the primary sources!
 all scholarly books and articles
 many popular resources
Use them in your research paper to:
 Provide background information and context
 Back up your interpretations and arguments
 Illustrate other points of view that you need to
address

7. What is a tertiary source?
Third-hand information.
A summary or synthesis of secondary sources.
Not original research.
 textbooks
 reference materials (encyclopedias, etc.)
Used as learning tools
 Overview of concepts
 Vocabulary
 Facts and figures
 How-to information

8. Finding business primary
sources
 Do you have a clear idea of what you
want?
 Search Google
 Not so much?
 Use the Primary Sources Guide as a starting
place
 There’s a section for business primary sources

9. Activity 1
 Find one primary source about Steve
Jobs.
 If you have any difficulty, please just ask
for help in chat!
 Paste the link in chat.

10. Scholarly, Professional,
and Popular sources

11. Scholarly Sources are:
1. By experts, for experts
2. Peer reviewed OR editorially reviewed
 Which means they have to be published

12. Non-scholarly sources can be:
1. Articles, books, videos, etc.
2. Published or unpublished
3. High quality and reliable or very, very
not.

13. Popular Sources you might use
 Reference books
 Textbooks
 Commercial press non-fiction books
 News reports
Magazines
Web site of a business, government, or
non-profit organization

14. Professional sources
 Professional journals, a.k.a. trade journals
a.k.a technical journals
Written by experts, for experts
 In subject areas where you don’t need to
be a scholar (PhD) to be an expert
 Not peer reviewed
 A lot of professors say “professional
sources” when they mean “scholarly
sources.”

15. How do you tell if it’s
Scholarly?
 Where did you find it?
 Check the About section on the journal or
publisher’s web site.
 What does it look like?

16. How To Find Scholarly Articles
1. Library Databases
2. OneSearch

17. Activity 2
1. Go to Business Source Complete.
2. Find one scholarly article on the
company of your choice.
3. Ask for help if you run into any difficulty.
4. Paste the permalink in chat.

18. Statistics in business
articles

19. Questions to ask
Where did they get these numbers from?
What exactly is this number measuring?
What population is that number talking
about? How representative was the
sample? How big was the sample?
 Did they use sound, objective research
methods?
What is the number NOT telling you?

20. Misleading charts and
infographics
 Size and perspective can be deceiving
 Image can appeal to our emotions
 Extra visual “noise” can confuse us

21. Who is it by? When was it
updated?
 Check the footer and the About section.
 If you can’t tell, you can’t trust it.

22. Is it a content farm?
 Companies want ad revenue. Pay people
$5 to write a search-engine optimized
article on some topic to attract Google
hits.
 Content is often plagiarized, often wrong.
 About.com, HubPages.com, Ask.com…
 If you use Chrome you can block these
from your Google search results!

23. Is it a blog?
 Blogs have no quality control oversight
 Blogs are often used for
 Marketing yourself
 Venting your opinions
 Hashing out ideas in incomplete/unfinished
form

24. Intended audience
 Good:
 Adults with open minds and some
knowledge and interest in the subject
 Bad:
 Children
 Complete beginners
 People who already have their minds made
up

25. Intended purpose
 Good:
 Inform and educate
 Bad:
 Entertain
 Sell
 Satirize
 Persuade
 Inspire hate, fear, loyalty, obedience, etc.

26. Timeliness, a.k.a. currency
 How up to date is the source?
 How much does that matter?

27. How up-to-date does it need
to be?
 It depends on what you want to know:
 I’m thinking of buying some Target shares.
 If I’m doing business in Ghana, is it polite to
shake hands?

28. How can you get up-to-date
information sources?

29. Activity 3
1. Go into OneSearch
2. Find an information source about “social
media” from 2012-2014.
3. Paste the permalink in the chat window
4. If you have any trouble, ask for help!

30. Only you can decide
 If an information source is:
 Relevant
 Credible

31. That’s all!
 For any library or research questions,
contact Ask A Librarian:
 800-847-3000 ext. 2222
 librarian@esc.edu
 http://www.esc.edu/askalibrarian