The modern world is online. Just as this portfolio provides my professional self with a public presence, every business, institution, and library must craft its online persona through its websites and software selections. Being able to evaluate the design, performance, and functionality of these online selves can add a valuable practice to my professional capabilities. 

The second assignment in my Information Storage and Retrieval course asked us to evaluate twenty-five university websites using the techniques we had learned for collecting data on web traffic and Google presence. Then I could use various techniques in Excel, such as scatterplots and mapping, to seek to gain insights from the available data that might inform a web design project. Finally, we were also challenged to experiment with AI and discuss how its analysis and performance compared to our own. Using emerging technologies and developing skills for evaluating these key information assets – our websites – taught me new ways to look at the modern online world.