About the Resources

Think of the "Looking Out for Yourself" resources as your self-reliance library. This library offers you one-stop shopping for the best web sites, books, magazines, and other information sources on the topics we cover.

Here's how the resource listings work.

• As you navigate through the "Contents," the top-rated resources are displayed along with each topic in descending order of rating, so your first view is of only the best resources on that topic.
• Of course, if you want to see all of the resources on a topic, you can do that, too. Just click on the "show all resources for this topic" link.
• If you just want to browse the library, you can click on the "Resources" icon over there in the left column and meander through the resource listings.
• If you want to see only a certain type of resource or only resources by a particular author, you can start a search on the "Resources" page.
• If you are curious about how a resource earned its rating, you can see the raw data, including comments from your fellow members, by clicking on the "show rating source" link.

As soon as you have joined the "Looking Out for Yourself" community you can submit resources that you would like to see in the library, and you can rate any resource that is currently in the collection. We review resource submissions for accuracy and completeness, so there is a brief delay (as much as a day or so) between when you submit a resource and its appearance in the library. When you rate a resource, your ratings and comments are added to the library immediately.

We include in the library only information resources, not products or services (not yet anyway). There are seven types of resources in the library: web sites and other on-line resources, books, periodicals, software & CD-ROMs, video & audio tapes, radio & TV programs, and organizations.

Resource ratings are weighted depending on where the rating comes from. If a resource has gone through a full-scale evaluation by our editorial department, then its rating carries a weight of 3 points. We also infer resource ratings based on our reading of objective reports from other high-integrity publications and web sites; these ratings carry a weight of 2 points. Ratings submitted by "Looking Out for Yourself" members, including our staff members, carry a weight of 1 point.

We don't display a rating until a resource has earned at least 4 points worth of "weight." This is our way of insuring that rated resources either have been through our editorial wringer or have been rated by a significant number of readers.

The rating for a resource is determined by averaging the weighted ratings and converting the resulting number to one of the five "bars" we display with the resource. The more bars, the higher the rating.

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