SEARCHING TOPICS ON THE WEB
***** Click HERE To Start Your Web Search *****
Remember this antidote for
information-overload:
data is not information
information is not knowledge
knowledge is not wisdom
wisdom is not love
If you’re unfamiliar with searching
the Web, or you want a quick tutorial, spend some time taking an excellent,
free Web-based mini-course offered by the University of South Carolina Beaufort
Library (link used by permission of Ellen
Chamberlain)
· A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web
For most general searches, use quotation marks around phrases, as in "suspension bridges". Using quotation marks tells the search engine to search for the two words as a phrase; you get much better hits, and fewer of them.
Start your search by using the following SEARCH ENGINES:
·
FirstGov – Your First Click to the U.S.
Government. This is the official
government website for searching the U.S. Government.
·
Ixquick – “the world’s most powerful
metasearch engine”
o
AcademicInfo – for college students and
academic researchers
o
BioLinks – scientific information
o
Ditto – online images
o
Dogpile
o
eBLAST -- Encyclopaedia Britannica and its
Internet Guide
o
electric monk – “the first search
engine that understands what you are looking for”
o
FindLaw – for everything legal
o
iLOR Search – the RESEARCH destination
o
InternetOracle -- a search gateway
o
Lycos
o
Mamma.com – The Mother of All Search Engines
o
Moreover – headlines from more than 1,800
news sites
o
MySimon – searches 2,000 online shops
o
Northern Light -- an award-winning
search engine
o
PDF File Search – especially useful for
government documents
o
37.com, with MegaSpider
(searching the search engines)
These are specialized search
engines:
o
NlightN
o
The Voice of the Shuttle: Humanities Research
o
World Wide Web Virtual Library
You should also use these PORTALS:
o
About.com - used to be MiningCo.com
o
Excite
o
GoTo
o
HotBot
o
Snap
o
Yahoo!
Searching U.S. Government Sites
FirstGov
– Your First Click to the U.S. Government.
This is the official government website for searching the U.S. Government.
Uncle Sam, at Google.com – for general searching
Global Index Listings -- A list of all the government locations on the Web.
The Federal Internet Guide -- at The Washington Post
GPO Access: Official Federal Government Information at
Your Fingertips
and there’s more
………………… please continue to scroll down
The following list of Web
sites
for searching the resources
of the U.S. Government
was compiled by
Hilary Fredette,
the Government Documents
Librarian at WVU.
Scroll down for categories
in:
General ---
Health --- Historical
--- Legislative ---
Statistical
Federal Web Locator
http://www.infoctr.edu/fwl/fedweb.new.html
Fedworld Information Network
Government Information
(Vanderbilt University)
http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/central/govt/gvtmain.html
Government Information
Xchange (GIX)
Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collection –
Government Information
http://infomine.ucr.edu/search/govpubsearch.phtml
Keeping America
Informed: U.S. Government Printing
Office
University of Michigan
Documents Center: Federal Government
Resources on the Web
http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/federal.html
Health Finder
The Avalon Project at the
Yale Law School: Documents in Law,
History and Diplomacy
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm
United States Historical
Census Data Browser
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/
Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet
Statistical Resources on the
Web (University of Michigan)
http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/stats.html
FedStats
Statistical Abstract of the
United States
http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-us.html
For a general Web overview of search tools, use
· The New York Times Newsroom Navigator .
For a list of 800 search engines arranged by type, try Beaucoup!
For general Web searching by topic, try Bottom Line's Most Useful Web Sites.
You should also explore StartHere and explore their wide range of Web search tools.
If you work at your own PC, you can download, FOR FREE, an excellent piece of search-engine software from www.copernic.com .
Also check out:
· Understanding and Comparing Web Search Tools
· How to Search the Web: A Guide to Search Tools
Scan these sites for learning the in’s and out’s of using search engines efficiently.
· Finding and Evaluating Information on the World Wide Web
· The Internet Search Tool Quick Reference Guide
· The Search is Over: the search-engine secrets of the pros
· Searching the Internet: Subject Indexes and Search Engines
· The Spider’s Apprentice: a helpful guide to Web search engines
· Understanding and Comparing Web Search Tools
· Net Resources That Help Explain What Search Engines Can Do
Power Features You Can Use To Focus Your Search
You should use "power features" to focus your search. Here's a list of the most common ones; they're often called Boolean operators. Not all of them work on all search engines, so you'll have to experiment. Most search engines have a button for HELP; use it if you're having trouble.
" " as in: "power burn" === only that exact phrase is found
+ as in: hotels+Cleveland === only hotels in Cleveland are found
Problem: This combination could also yield results for hotels that President Grover Cleveland stayed at, or hotels in Cleveland, CA. Therefore, while you might get what you're looking for, you might also get some undesired hits. Also, by using "hotels" instead of "hotel," you might miss a hotel like the Regency Hotel, if it doesn't have the word "hotels" on its page. That is, the Web searches for literal combinations of letters rather than common meanings (the searches are "dumb"). So you have to be specific and try a number of combinations.
- as in: hotels-Cleveland === all hotels except those in Cleveland are found
NOT as in: hotels NOT Cleveland === works the same as the minus sign
AND as in: hotels AND Cleveland === both words appear, but not necessarily together
OR as in "NYSE" OR "New York Stock Exchange" === either one is found
| as in: pipe|plastic === pipe is found, then plastic within that group
title: or t: as in: title:Mars or t:Mars (in Yahoo): the word appears in the title of the site
NOTE: In some search engines, there is a limitation concerning upper- and lower-case letters. For instance, if you search for Hotels+Cleveland, you might get results, in some search engines, only for pages where "hotels" is capitalized. Again, you have to experiment. As a general rule, lower case returns a larger number of hits.
Use
these sites to learn how to evaluate the reliability of material you find on
the Web.
·
Criteria for the
Evaluation of Internet Information Resources
·
Critical Thinking about
What You See on the Web
·
Ten C’s for Evaluating
Internet Resources