We need a set of standards for evaluating the reliability and appropriateness of resources for college-level writing. Many universities recommend the so-called CRAAP test, originally developed at the Miriam Library at the State University of California, Chico. The letters in the CRAAP acronym refer to the five areas of the test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. To see if a given source is appropriate for our scholarly purposes, we answer the questions associated with each heading. So, for example, under the heading of Currency, the California State University, Chico, lists the following: “When was the information published or posted?”; “Has the information been revised or updated?”; “Does your topic require current information, or will older sources work as well?”; “Are the links functional?”
https://www.csuchico.edu/lins/handouts/eval_websites.pdf
For accessing the CRAAP test, we can do no better than going to the original source, by clicking the above link. For a video overview of the test and its importance, the University of Mary Washington’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies provides: