Criteria

Dino Directory
http://flood.nhm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/dino

Jason's Dinosaur Site
http://members.aol.com/Ermine/index.html

Authority

The site is published by the National History Museum of London, England. It is copyrighted by the NHM. Because museums are government funded and non-profit, they are a reliable authority, making this site an excellent educational tool.

This is a personal web site that Jason has put together himself. There is no contact address (just an e-mail link). The domain shows that Jason owns web space on the AOL web site. Also without any verification of Jason and his qualifications, I can only assume he is not a credible source.

Accuracy

All of the information given about the dinosaurs is cross-referenced into the Museum's library. For example, if you click on Diplodocus, a page with his dino stats will appear. At the bottom of the page, it will offer you the option to find out more about Diplodocus in the library.

Jason lists no sources. He does not even give a hint to where he has gathered his information from. There are no links or footnotes.

Objectivity

The goals of the site are obviously to educate students about dinosaurs. The writing is clear and concise. It gives straight facts without elaboration.

If I were researching which dinosaurs that Jason liked best, this would be the site to visit. But when I research dinosaurs, I do not need opinions I need facts. This site offers a questionable few. The tone is not at all scholarly, and the goals of the web page are unclear.

Currency

The terms of use page was last updated on July 18, 2002. However, the terms state that the NHM promises to do its best to keep the site updated and error free. However since there are no other dates on, it is hard to see what has been updated recently. The links are predominantly internal links and all worked fine.

Jason's web site was created on January 18, 1998. It was revised once on April 5, 1998. This means it has not been updated in five years! There have been at least three major dinosaur discoveries made in the last five years. His information is therefore out-of-date and no longer valid.

Coverage

The NHM site not only lists the basic statistics of dinosaurs in an A-Z directory, but you can also search for dinosaurs by country or body shape.

I would consider this site not valuable to research. However his animated graphics are great.