Learning Outcomes for this Module
- LO1: Define important concepts such as: authority, peer review, bias, point of view, editorial process, purpose, audience, information privilege and more.
- LO2: Critically assess information sources in pursuit of various purposes.
- LO4:Turn questions into strategies for retrieving a variety of information sources.
- LO6: Reflect upon your own research process.
Tools
| What You’ll Need | What We Used |
|---|---|
| Forum for reflection posts | Padlet |
| A tool to create a self-quiz | Microsoft Forms |
| A place for students to submit/share their answers to the activity | Blog posts on our WordPress-based course site |
How to Credit Us
Except where otherwise noted, the lesson plans on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
To credit us for this module/lesson plan, cite the following:
Newman, J., Ward, S.K.L. (2025, June 09). Understanding URLs module. LIBR 100 OER. https://lib100oer.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2025/06/09/understanding-urls/
Understanding URLs
Module Introduction
It is easy to lose sight of the context in which information is created, especially on the internet – we all get laser-focused on finding a specific source and lose sight of how and why that source was created. In this module, you will learn to “read” and decode your the URLs of your search results in order to better understand the sources your search is returning.
NOTE: decoding URLs doesn’t apply to results you find in a library database. This strategy is only for web search results.
This module consists of the following activities:
- Internet Domains resource – how to read URLs
- Decoding URLs quiz (4 points)
- Search activity (4 points)
- Brief reflection (2 points)
Internet Domains
Read this resource from the University of Washington Libraries. Link to “Internet Domains” guide, with one correction (see below): https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/evaluate/domains
***One qualification about .org websites: the above resources states that .orgs represent nonprofit organizations. THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY TRUE. According to the Wikipedia entry for .org (emphasis is my own):
The domain name .org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used on the Internet. The name is truncated from ‘organization’. It was one of the original domains established in 1985, and has been operated by the Public Interest Registry since 2003. The domain was originally “intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn’t fit anywhere else.”[1] It is commonly used by non-profit organizations, open-source projects, and communities, but is an open domain that can be used by anyone.
You will need to understand this content before completing the rest of the activities in this module. This content applies only to Internet Domains and URLs, not to items found within research databases through the libraries.
A few things to keep in mind:
Reminder: decoding URLs doesn’t apply to results you find in a library database. This strategy is only for web search results.
A DOI, or “Digital Object Identifier” is NOT a URL. You can read more about what they are here, but please remember that they are not URLs and cannot be read or decoded the way URLs can.
A database (JSTOR, Web of Science, EBSCO, etc) is NOT a publication. A publication is the specific name of the journal, magazine, newspaper where something is published (e.g. Journal of Dance Education, The New York Times, etc).
Decoding URLs Quiz
Complete the following quiz on Decoding URLs. Be sure to enter your name so you get credit for the quiz.
*Note to instructors: we’ve included a link to the quiz template that you can duplicate using Microsoft Forms.
Search Activity and Blog Post
Choose two keywords or phrases and do a basic Google search with them.
Select two of the items in your Google results, visit the links, and write a post including the following information (you will have two sets of answers, one for each URL):
- The words you entered into the search.
- The link you investigated.
- Answers to the following questions:
- What is the domain suffix and what does it tell you about this source?
- What is the domain name and what does it tell you about this source?
- What is the title of the page you visited, and what does it tell you about this source?
Remember that you are investigating the URL and what you can learn about the source. We don’t want to know what you learned about the topic of your research, rather we want to know what you learned about the individual sources/links you investigated.
*Note to instructors: we had students post on our class website, but this could just as easily be a Padlet or other online post.
Brief Reflection
For this module you learned how to break down URLs that you find online. Write up a brief reflection about your experiences with these activities.
For your post, identify the following:
- One thing that you learned from this module that was new(ish) to you.
- One thing you still have questions about
