Selection Policy for BIOTN

 BASIC GUIDELINES 

These pages are highly selective, not comprehensive.  

They will reflect the ethical and social service orientation of our Catholic university.  We will choose sites for each degree program we offer, but not for subject areas we do not teach.  

Sites chosen  will meet the same standards as the books we select--sound research resources, with substantive content, written or chosen by scholars, professionals, government officials, librarians, or other experts.  We will consider the accuracy of the information, the currency, and the frequency with which it is updated.  

We will not select sites that appear to violate copyright law, or sites that are purely recreational.  We will not promote commercial sites unless they offer substantive content for educational use and are free of charge.

 THE KINDS OF SITES WE CHOOSE 

• Reference sources, both general and discipline-specific.

• Sites with complete texts of research, legal documents, and analysis.

• Authoritative selective and comprehensive indexes to web sites in the academic disciplines we teach.

• Sites that offer online instruction, multimedia texts, course syllabi.

• Homepages of professional and scholarly organizations.

• Service sites: things that meet practical needs of our students and faculty.

• Sites that offer ethical perspectives on issues, or codes of ethics.

• Objective information and analysis on  topics  many students are researching simultaneously, to supplement our overwhelmed  book collection. 

• Sites for our own library staff's use, including a complete reference desk as well as resources for technical services and library administrators.

• Sites that teach a thought process to students.

Because internet sites are properly only one third of a total research strategy, we link in our licensed databases and our library research tutorials and handouts to the appropriate subject areas.  Since we are part of a worldwide library community, we give permission for other libraries to make use of our handouts as long as they give appropriate attribution.