Chapter 2 — Vet and the CRAAP Checklist-Card

Vet is a small owl-tween with a small folded CRAAP checklist-card on a leather cord and a steady, attentive bearing.

She is patient, warm-brown-and-cream-feathered, steady-eyed, thoughtful. Her signature feature is the small folded CRAAP checklist-card — a hand-made card with five sections labeled CURRENCY, RELEVANCE, AUTHORITY, ACCURACY, PURPOSE — each with a small space for evaluator notes.

This is load-bearing. Vet embodies the source-evaluation primitive. Not every source is trustworthy. Not every source is appropriate for the question. The CRAAP test is five questions you ask of any source before you use it. The test was developed by librarians as a teaching tool — concrete, memorable, applicable to any source type.

Critical: Vet NEVER frames source-evaluation as gatekeeping. She is explicit: “CRAAP is not snobbery. It is honesty about what kind of source this is, and whether it fits this research question. A blog post can be appropriate evidence (for some questions); a peer-reviewed article can be inappropriate (for others). Match source to question.”

She teaches the CRAAP scaffolds:

• CURRENCY: When was this published? Has it been updated? Is the date appropriate for my question? (Old sources for historical questions; current sources for fast-moving fields.)
• RELEVANCE: Does this source answer my research question? Or is it tangentially related? Is it at the right depth?
• AUTHORITY: Who created this source? What are their credentials? Are they qualified to speak on this topic?
• ACCURACY: Are the claims supported by evidence? Are sources cited? Can the facts be verified?
• PURPOSE: Why was this source created? To inform? Persuade? Sell? Entertain? The purpose shapes how the information is presented.
• All 5 questions, every time. (Don’t skip. Use the card.)
• Different source types need different weight on different questions. (Wikipedia: Authority varies (crowd-sourced); Currency is usually good; Accuracy depends on citations. Use as starting point, not final source.)
• Cross-app: SleuthLab investigation-bias-safe register. (Same epistemic discipline: evidence-based reasoning over hunch + alternative-explanation consideration.)

Vet grew up in a small village where her family had been the village’s seal-bearers — the owls who verified and applied the village seal to documents to certify them. The work had required checking the source carefully before applying the seal. Vet had learned by age six (owl-years) that trust required verification.

She walked to ResearchQuest at twenty-two. Scholar asked: “What is source-evaluation?” Vet: “CRAAP. Five questions. Currency. Relevance. Authority. Accuracy. Purpose. Match source to question. All 5, every time.” Scholar: “You are appointed.”

She is explicit: “I have evaluated many sources. Most novice researchers skip the CRAAP step — and end up using sources that don’t fit their question. The 5 minutes spent CRAAP-ing saves hours of misdirected research.”

“It is not hard. It is 5 questions, every time. CRAAP.”

The checklist-card waits for the next source.

Voice register

Guidance: Steady-eyed, thoughtful, fond of CRAAP card. Owl-tween. NEVER frames CRAAP as gatekeeping; ALWAYS as match-source-to-question.

Sample lines:

• “Currency. Relevance. Authority. Accuracy. Purpose. All 5, every time.”
• “Match source to question.”
• “CRAAP is honesty about what kind of source this is.”

Arc

• Kit 2 — Anchor.
• Kit 3-7 — Recurring.
• Kit 8-16 — Ensemble.

Relationships

• Alliance: Wonder (Vet evaluates sources for Wonder’s question); all ResearchQuest cast. Cross-app: SleuthLab investigation-bias register.

Cultural-sensitivity gate

Anti-credentialism enforced. CRAAP applied as honest evaluation, not gatekeeping.

Cultural-context note

The CRAAP test was developed by Sarah Blakeslee at CSU Chico (~2004) and has been widely adopted in library + information-literacy pedagogy. The village-seal-bearer family framing is a deliberate generic European-village tradition.