Editor's Revisited: It's Time to Break Up with .gov

When I published this article in October 2025, I knew it would be controversial. For generations, librarians have taught students that government websites were among the most reliable places to begin their research. Challenging that long-held assumption wasn’t something I did lightly.

Nearly a year later, I believe the core message is even more relevant.

This article wasn’t about abandoning government sources. It was about abandoning shortcuts.

Information literacy has never been about trusting a website because of its domain name. It has always been about asking questions, evaluating evidence, recognizing bias, and verifying claims. Government websites remain valuable resources, but they should be examined with the same critical thinking we expect students to apply to every other source.

Looking back, this article marked the beginning of a larger conversation that would continue throughout the year in essays like When the White House Rewrites January 6, When Official Channels Become Political Tools, and The Most Dangerous Kind of Misinformation. Together, those articles explored a question that continues to shape my work:

How do we teach students to evaluate information when no source should be accepted without verification?

As another school year begins, I think this question deserves another look.

Read the original article here:

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October 30, 2025

This special edition steps outside our usual format and topics to confront an uncomfortable truth: the old research rule we’ve taught for decades, “If it ends in .gov, it’s reliable,” no longer holds.