reading assignment 1

Piper, Paul S. Web Hoaxes , Counterfeit Sites, and Other Spurious Information on the Internet. Web of Deception.


In Piper’s chapter on Web sites that provide misleading information, he breaks down misleading websites in different categories: counterfeit, malicious, product, fictitious, parodies/spoofs/entertainment, hacks, disinformation, and mistakes. Piper distinguishes webs sites using a definition as well has example of that specific type of web site. A counterfeit site is one that attempts to pass itself off as an authentic site. Malicious has the intent to sway information to do harm to the reputation of a product, person or group. Parodies/spoofs/entertainment is not normally used to be taken seriously but under the right circumstances they are mistakenly used as creditable sources. Hacks are cases where reputable web site is hacked into and the information is purposely changed by a third party without the consent of the administrators of the site. Disinformation is defined as the “dissemination of deliberately false information, especially when supplied by a government or its agent to a foreign power or the media, with the intention of influencing the policies or pinion of those who receive it.” Mistakes are just that mistake made not on purpose but accidentally. Piper states that the elderly and young children are most susceptible to misinformation on the internet and that most dangerous information is often that involving medicine and health. Piper also explains the dangers of the misleading web sites and ways to protect your self from false information. Piper suggestions include: consider the source and check where the web site is registered and certain organization as dedicated to eliminating internet hoaxes.
The most interesting aspect of Piper article was the examples he provided to prove that such information is available on the internet. I agree with Piper in that if one uses common sense information on the internet can be used every affectively. The only problem that exists is that one has to be able to determine if the site is creditable or not.

News Report # 1

“S.C. Universities Face Loss of Shared Database Subscriptions”. American Lidrary Association. January 14, 2009 http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2009/January2009/PASCALmoneycrisis.cfm?persistent=&expy_dt=

The Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries (PASCAL) budget was cut from two million to $200,000 for the fiscal year 2008-2009. PACAL is a group of South Carolina academic libraries who provides inter library loans services a well as data bases of scholarly journals. Due to the budget cut, PASCAL, stopped it LexisNexis database subscription as well as cutting back from five days a week for interlibrary loan delivery to three days a week. The data base service will continue until July but from that point forward the plan is to just be a interlibrary loan service. To help alleviate the budget cuts the libraries have started to require service fees for users. PASCAL’s parent organization, the Commission on Higher Education for the State of South Carolina, is hoping to convince the legislature to restore the funds for fiscal year 2009 2010 and is seeking the assistance of university presidents, who are showing strong support for the program. Support is also been available from student organization.

Despite the economic difficulties that the world is facing one of the last places that such drastic budget cuts such take place is on the higher education system, especially libraries. The subsidies that our government provides for our educational system ass allowed for us to have a high percentage of our population to pursue a college degree. One of the most important lessons that is gained from a college experience is how to gather information for a purpose. From perspective of a student it is hard for me to imagine doing a paper with out the help of online databases of scholarly journals. With the relatively recent switch to almost exclusively digital copies of journals it would be next to impossible for most students to get access to journal articles if Universities did not provide access to these databases. Journals provide students with an opportunity to obtain what is cutting edge in their specific field of study.

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