Information Fluency

MM Companion
author

Date Detective I

An interactive MicroModule Companion Review the MicroModule

This tutorial provides an opportunity to apply techniques introduced in the MicroModule: Date

What date is best to cite?

When it comes to information online, freshness becomes very important. Information ages quickly and can become inaccurate. Dates on a Website often disagree:

original publication date copyright last modified
Determine which date is best to use for this article: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama (opens in new window), then click the button by the best option below. 2 points are possible.

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Last Modified Date

It may be possible to discover the date a Webpage was last modified using metadata. Using a browser like Firefox, right-click on the Webpage. From the popup window, select View Page Info. Find the modified: information. If the date/timecode information is the current time, this indicates the time the server loaded the page information--not when it was written. Older Websites tend to have static pages, so last modified information is more reliable in those cases.