Senior Project Online Source

“Specific Page Title or Article Title”	"Animal Cruelty"
Primary Contributor to the Website (if given) (author, editor, producer, etc)	American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Title of the Entire Website (not www. )	Learning to Give
Publisher or Sponsoring Organization of the website (if given)	Learning to Give
Date Page was Last Revised
Date You Read It	7 February 2012
<URL address> (ALL of it)	http://learningtogive.org/papers/paper359.html

FIVE FACTS FROM THE SOURCE (Embedded):

The article states that the definition of animal cruelty is, "acts of violence or neglect perpetrated against animals"(ASPCA).

The article gives the origin of animal cruelty when stating that animal cruelty, "has been traced back as far as the 12th century" and began with "fighting dogs for sport"(ASPCA).

This article goes back to animal cruelty history and states that, "for centuries fights occurred across Europe until the baiting of larger animals was prohibited in 1835"(ASPCA).

Another start of animal cruelty was cockfighting and even, "the founding fathers being fond of the blood sport"(ASPCA). Cockfighting is a fight between two game roosters.

The ASPCA was founded in, "1866" by "Henry Bergh"(ASPCA) who wanted a better city in New York for animals.

Summary of Source (Three-Four Sentences of the Who, What, Where, Why, and How in your own words. NO OPINION):

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gives information about the history of animal cruelty. Many forms of animal cruelty began in the 12th century with dog fighting, cock fighting, and later on in the 19th century there was abuse to farm animals in factory farms. Many of these animals were forced to deal with physical and psychological abuse for years. New types of animal abuse emerged when the internet became available. There were videos being posted of acts of animal cruelty which influenced others. Finally, in 1999 the Crush Act was enforced.

Credibility of Source:
Author or Site: Who is the author? What training have they had? If there is no author, examine the site. What is the purpose of the site? Who funds the site?
The site, Learning to Give, is an education website that teaches and gives civic engagement. The purpose of the site is to give information to the community about issues that are occuring in our society. The article itself was written by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which is an organization that deals with animal cruelty hands on. They go out and arrest animal abusers, therefore their information is credible.

Attachment: Does the author or site have anything to gain from writing this, or is it simply informative? For example, is it a cigarette business posting an article about the benefit of cigarettes, or is it a scientific community unaffiliated with the cigarette business?

The author simply wrote the article to be informative. The ASPCA wants to prevent animal cruelty as much as they can.

Bias: Do you detect a bias (a favoring of either side) in the author's writing?
There is no bias in the article, except for the fact that the article is against animal abusers themselves. The site wants to inform people that animal cruelty is around us, so that we can find the abusers and give them a consequence.
References: Does the author cite references in the writing? If so, do these add or take away from the credibility?

The author cites references and has a bibliography at the end of the article. This bibliography adds to the authors credibility because it allows us to look at the sites the author got his or her information from and therefore we can determine if they too are credible.
Use of Source: How will you use this source in your project?

I plan to use this source as help for my introduction page, as it will prepare me to give information on the topic before discussing the solution to the problem. I also plan to use this article in writing the history on the topic and how it began. The article gives a good amount of information on the origin of animal cruelty and the laws that have changed since the 12 century.