Academic Skills 4

Searching the World Wide Web Searching the World Wide Web can be both beneficial and frustrating. You may find vast amounts of information, or you may not find the kinds of information you're looking for. Searching online will provide you with a wealth of information, but not all of it will be useful or of the highest quality.

The World Wide Web is a superb resource, but it doesn't contain all the information that you can find at a library or through library online resources. Don't expect to limit your search to what is on the Internet, and don't expect search engines to find everything that is on the Web.

Studies of search engine usage show that search engines are increasing exponentially in their indexing of new websites and information. Indexing is the web term for finding and including new web pages and other media in search results. For example, in 1994, Google indexed approximately 20 million pages. As of 2004, that number is up to 8 billion! However, search engines still only index a fraction of what is available on the Internet and not all of it is up to date.

Not all of the information located on the Internet is able to be found via search engines. Researchers Chris Sherman and Gary Price call this information the "invisible web" (another name that is frequently used is the "deep web"). Invisible web information includes certain file formats, information contained in databases, and other omitted pages from search engines.

What does this mean for a researcher? Understanding the nature of the Internet, how to navigate it, and how it is organized can help you filter out the quality information and websites from that which does not relate or is of questionable quality.

Kinds of Search Engines and Directories 1. Web directories: Web directories (also known as indexes, web indexes or catalogues) are broken down into categories and sub-categories and are good for broad searches of established sites. For example, if you are looking for information on the environment but not sure how to phrase a potential topic on holes in the ozone, you could try browsing through the Open Directory Project categories.

2. Search Engines: Search engines ask for keywords or phrases and then search the Web for results. Some search engines look only through page titles and headers. Others look through documents, such as Google which can search PDFs. Many search engines now include some directory categories as well (such as Yahoo).

3. Metasearch engines: These (such as Dogpile, Mamma, and Metacrawler) search other search engines and often search smaller, less well known search engines and specialized sites. These search engines are good for doing large, sweeping searches of what information is out there.

Searching with a Search Engine Due to the large archive of web pages you must limit your search terms. Adjust your search based upon the number of responses you receive (if you get too few responses, submit a more general search; if you get too many, add more modifiers ). Each search engine have a different method of inquiry.

4. Read the instructions and FAQs located on the search engine to learn how that particular site works. Each search engine is slightly different, and a few minutes learning how to use the site properly will save you large amounts of time and prevent useless searching. 5. Each search engine has different advantages.

Google is one of the largest search engines, followed closely by MSN and Yahoo . This means that these three search engines will search a larger portion of the Internet than other search engines. Lycos allows you to search by region, language, and date. Altavista has searches for images, audio, video, and news. Ask Jeeves allows you to phrase your search terms in the form of a question. It is wise to search through multiple search engines to find the most available information .

How do we start? Select your terms carefully If your early searches turn up too many references, try searching some relevant ones to find more specific or exact terms. Most search engines now have "Advanced Search" features. These features allow you to use Boolean operators (below) as well as specify other details like date, language, or file type.

Know Boolean operators Most search engines allow you to combine terms with words (referred to as Boolean operators) such as "and," "or," or "not." Knowing how to use these terms is very important for a successful search. Most search engines will allow you to apply the Boolean operators in an "advanced search" option.

AND AND is the most useful and most important term. It tells the search engine to find your first word AND your second word or term. AND can, however, cause problems, especially when you use it with phrases or two terms that are each broad in themselves or likely to appear together in other contexts.

For example, if you'd like information about the basketball team Chicago Bulls and type in "Chicago AND Bulls," you will get references to Chicago and to bulls. Since Chicago is the center of a large meat packing industry, many of the references will be about this since it is likely that "Chicago" and "bull" will appear in many of the references relating to the meat-packing industry.

OR Use OR when a key term may appear in two different ways. For example, if you want information on sudden infant death syndrome, try "sudden infant death syndrome OR SIDS." OR is not always a helpful term because you may find too many combinations with OR .

For example, if you want information on the American economy and you type in "American OR economy," you will get thousands of references to documents containing the word "American" and thousands of unrelated ones with the word "economy."

NEAR NEAR is a term that can only be used on some search engines, and it can be very useful. It tells the search engine to find documents with both words but only when they appear near each other, usually within a few words.

For example, suppose you were looking for information on mobile homes, almost every site has a notice to "click here to return to the home page." Since "home" appears on so many sites, the search engine will report references to sites with the word "mobile" and "click here to return to the home page" since both terms appear on the page. Using NEAR would eliminate that problem.

NOT NOT tells the search engine to find a reference that contains one term but not the other. This is useful when a term refers to multiple concepts. For example, if you are working on an informative paper on eagles, you may encounter a host of websites that discuss the football team the Philadelphia Eagles, instead. To omit the football team from your search results, you could search for "eagles NOT Philadelphia."

Resources to Search the Invisible Web The invisible web includes many types of online resources that normally cannot be found using regular search engines. The listings below can help you access these resources.

Alexa : A website that archives older websites that are no longer available on the Internet. For example, Alexa has about 87 million websites from the 2000 election that are for the most part no longer available on the Internet. Complete Planet : Provides an extensive listing of databases that cannot be searched by conventional search engine technology. It provides access to lists of databases which you can then search individually.

Other Useful Sites for Finding Information About.com : Provides practical information on a large variety of topics written by trained professionals. Wikipedia : The largest free and open access encyclopedia on the interne. Refdesk : A site that provides reviews and a search feature for free reference materials online.

Critical Evaluation Why Evaluate What You Find on the Web? Anyone can put up a Web page about anything. Many pages not kept up-to-date. No quality control. Most sites not “peer-reviewed”. Less trustworthy than scholarly publications. No selection guidelines for search engines.

Web Evaluation Techniques Before you click to view the page... Look at the URL - personal page or site ? ~ or % or users or members Domain name appropriate for the content ? edu, com, org, net, gov, ca, us, uk, etc. Published by an entity that makes sense ? News from its source? Advice from valid agency?

Web Evaluation Techniques Scan the perimeter of the page Can you tell who wrote it ? name of page author organization, institution, agency you recognize e-mail contact by itself not enough Credentials for the subject matter ? look for links to: “ About us” “Philosophy” “Background” “Biography” Is it recent or current enough ? look for “last updated” date - usually at bottom If no links or other clues... truncate back the URL http://hs.houstonisd.org/hspva/academic/Science/Thinkquest/gail/text/ethics.html

Web Evaluation Techniques Indicators of quality Sources documented links, footnotes, etc. As detailed as you expect in print publications ? do the links work ? Information retyped or forged why not a link to published version instead ? Links to other resources biased, slanted ?

Web Evaluation Techniques STEP BACK & ASK: Does it all add up ? Why was the page put on the Web ? inform with facts and data? explain, persuade? sell, entice? share, disclose? as a parody or satire? Is it appropriate for your purpose?

Academic Skills 4

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Academic Skills 4