Going beyond .gov: Using government information to teach evaluation of sources

Many instruction librarians teach students that the URL extension .gov is one sign of a reliable, authoritative Internet source. This is true in many cases, but there are other very important reasons that government information deserves a larger place in information literacy sessions. It offers a clear example of several concepts students must understand in order to judge the reliability of the information they find. Information from different administrations and different branches of government can be potent examples of how point of view, bias, and audience affect the content, structure, and tone of information sources. Furthermore, government sources can be used to evaluate secondary sources that cite them or analyze them.