Look for an email address, postal address or telephone number from which you can request information about the author or sponsor.

Check the header, footer, watermark or wallpaper for information that might provide clues. It may be part of an official academic or scholarly site. It may not.

Try contacting the webmaster of the site. Ask questions.

If the site is part of a larger site, you may be able to use the internal search engine or directory to search for the author's name.

Using one of the Internet search engines like AltaVista, search for the author's name as a phrase (use quotation marks). Example: "Andrew Weil"

Notice the URL, the site's address - .com is for commercial sites; .org is technically for nonprofit organizations; .gov is a government site; .net identifies a network; and .edu is for education sites.

.edu sites will probably provide research quality resources and information as well as dependable links but they may also include individual home pages of people affiliated with the institution. Individual homepages are usually not officially endorsed by the institution.

The tilde ~ in a website's url or address is sometimes an indication of a personal page. In any case, it shows the site is probably part of a larger entity.

Another possible clue of a personal page would be an address that includes "members.aol.com," "tripod," or "geocites."

Many associations can be verified by looking at The Scholarly Societies Project (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/overview.html ). Is it represented?