It is a good idea to use a few different search facilities. In addition to the State Library’s subject directories.
General Search Engines
Search engines allow you to search for keywords in Internet sites. You can enter words relating to a topic – tell the search engine to search – and a list of (hopefully) related sites will be displayed. These are searchable databases of Internet files or pages collected by a computer program or piece of software – no humans are involved in selection and evaluation.
The software used to collect sites (known as crawlers, spiders, robots, worms and so on) vary in operation, as do the search methods employed by particular search engines. These variations produce a variety of search results.
An interesting thing about search engines is that they may index the full text of the sites they find. This means you can search for particular strings of words (such as a line of poetry) and the engine will find it wherever it appears in the document. The search is conducted on the search engines database (the sites collected together by the software) – not ‘live’ on the web.
Google is a good example of a search engine. It indexes an enormous number of sites and the way the search is constructed seems to produce relevant results much of the time. It also offers great flexibility in searching, using the ‘Advanced Search’. Most search engines, will allow you to choose a simple’ or ‘advanced’ search.
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The Google Advanced Search page
In many cases the advanced search may be useful, allowing you to specify your results in a variety of ways – the Google advanced search, for example allows you to:
· Specify that all keywords appear somewhere in the document
· Specify an exact sequence of words
· Specify that any keywords appear
· Exclude words
· Specify where in the document your keywords appear
· Specify language
· Specify parts of the URL – and so on.
With all search engines and subject directories it pays to read the HELP screens (you will usually find a ‘HELP’ or ‘TIPS’ link somewhere on the search screen). There are many search engines – try a few and see which one you find most useful. It is worth noting that no search engine covers the entire Internet and that no two search engines cover all of the same sites. In fact there is often surprisingly little duplication, so it pays to use more than one. Some popular Search Engines are:
· Google www.google.com
· AltaVista www.altavista.com
· Northernlight www.northernlight.com
· HotBot www.hotbot.com
· Excite www.excite.com
· Anzwers www.anzwers.com.au
In general, a Subject Directory is good to use if you are looking for recommended sites on a particular topic, while search engines can be used when you want a specific site or phrase, or your topic is relatively narrow or somewhat obscure.
MetaSearch Engines
These search the search engines, so you effectively search the results of multiple search engines simultaneously. They report the number of hits from each of the sites and display the titles and search engine source of each item. The matching documents are listed in order of relevance. Some metasearch engines:
· Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com) is a popular example
· Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)
· Ixquick (www.ixquick.com)
· Metaeureka (www.metaeureka.com)
The Deep/Invisible web
Refers to information stored in databases accessible on the web, but not necessarily found using search engines and subject directories. The ‘deep’ or ‘invisible’ refers to the fact that search engines do not necessarily locate information and words inside a database, therefore that information is invisible.
To find out more about the Invisible web, have a look at the following site. Searchability – (www.searchability.com) this is a list of guides (with descriptions) to thousands of search engines covering a huge number of subjects. You will also find this kind of resource in some subject directories – the State Library’s Netlinks for example.
WHAT IS ON THE INTERNET – EVALUATION
Think of something – any subject or topic – and the chances are that there are some websites on the topic. However, it is important to remember that the Internet and WWW is a relatively anarchic environment – nobody is in charge, there are no guarantees that what you find will be of any value whatsoever. It is a self-publishing medium – anybody can produce a site and put it on the Internet, nobody necessarily screens or evaluates the content, so it is a good idea to equip yourself with the means to evaluate the sites that you find in your searches.
There are many excellent sites concerned with the topic of evaluation. Many of them say basically the same thing in greater or lesser detail. Here is a synopsis of the work of academics concerned with the topic of evaluation (you will be able to access their sites from a link at the end of this handout). These are some of the main issues you should concern yourself with when evaluating a site.
· Accuracy – check against what you know, or against other resources
· Authority – are the people responsible for the content specialists on the topic
· Objectivity – is it pushing a particular point of view
· Currency – is it up to date
· Coverage – is it focused or general, comprehensive or selective
· Scope – what subject areas and time frames, how in-depth
· Organisation and design – is it easy to look at and use
· Purpose – why was the site constructed, for whom
· Quality – is it well written
