I am teaching a class dealing with assessing the quality of
legal information that is found on the web. I have always
taught that looking at the .gov extension was one thing to
look at when assessing the source of the information.
For example, you are looking for the Alaska Code. At the
site www.alaska.gov you find the Alaskan code and the page
says this is an official page and the code is up to date.
Well of course, anyone can create a page that says they are
the official site so looking at the url is one piece of
evidence to determine the source of the information. If you
were searching for the Alaska code and you found an
official site at the address www.geoworldnet.com/~doug you
would be more likely to question the source of the
information.
What I am hoping to find out is how hard is it to register
for a domain name with a .gov extension. How much reliance
would you put in the .gov extension? I know that there are
many librarians on this list that work for governmental
units, if you have had the experience of registering a .gov
domain name I would be interested in the process that was
needed to get the domain name.
I have gone to web sites (including Internic) that register
domain names and they only seem to be giving out .com,
.org, and .net extensions. This would seem to indicate that
not anyone can sign up for a .gov but if you have differing
info I would love to here it.
Thanks
-------------------------------------------------------
Troy Johnson School of Law Library
Public Services Librarian Valparaiso University
656 S. Greenwich St. Valparaiso, IN 46383
219 465-7820 219 465-7917 (fax)
email: Troy.Johnson@valpo.edu
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