Searching the Web Effectively

Evaluating Internet Sources

Important considerations for evaluating information sources include:

1. Authorship 
• Who wrote the document?
• Is there information about the author's qualifications for writing about this topic? (Education, experience, position?)
• What organization provides the information?
2. Objectivity  
• What appears to be the purpose for publishing this information?
• Does what you know about the organization suggest a bias?
3. Accuracy and Currency
• When was this document created or last updated?
• Are there errors in spelling and/or grammar?
• Can you spot any errors of fact?
• Does the document list the sources of its information?

There are many Web pages that discuss the possibility of an asteroid or comet hitting the earth. Here are some to look at.

Search Engines Vs. Directories

There are two kinds of services which allow you to search for information on the Net: search engines and directories (also known as indexes).

Search engines look for a key word or phrase appearing in Web pages. An example is FAST Search (http://www.alltheweb.com). A search for "colleges" would find millions of pages containing this word, but very few sites of individual colleges. Points which distinguish search engines from each other are: User interface/ease of use Searching options Number and quality of pages in database Weighting scheme for ordering results Other features, such as cached pages

Directories index sites according to categories. An example isYahoo (http://www.yahoo.com). You could pick an upper-level category like "Education" and then follow links to "Higher Education," "Colleges and Universities," and so on. Or you could search for the key word "colleges," and find categories containing that word. Characteristics which distinguish directories are: User interface/ease of use Number and quality of pages in database Relevance of classification Other features, such as sorting by type of site

There are few pure search engines nowadays. Most have some directory features. An example is Google (http://www.google.com/).

Meta-Search Engines

Meta-search engines search a number of other search engines and directories, all at once. An example is Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com). Features distinguishing meta-search engines from one another are:

• User interface/ease of use
• Searching options
• Number and character of search engines covered
• Weighting scheme for ordering results

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Boolean Searching

Boolean searching connects two (or more) search terms together with operators. The most common operators are AND, OR, and NOT. AND narrows a search by requiring that the result include both terms:

          Shakespeare AND Bacon

(You are doing a paper on the theory that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays and you want to find documents about Shakespeare that contain the word, "Bacon.")

          Santorini OR Thera

(You want information about the Mediterranean island of Santorini, formerly known as Thera. Your search will find it under either name)

           "Roy Rogers" NOT basketball

(Your search is about the cowboy star, not the NBA player.)

Search Syntax

A search word or combination of words connected with operators is called a query. The rules, or syntax, for forming a query vary from one search engine to another. Virtually all have a link to "Help," or "Search Tips," which will tell you what the rules are, and what options are available to you. Some search engines have only a few simple ways to search. Others are very powerful and allow complicated queries with all kinds of special operators, truncation, and special searches. Examples of powerful search engines are Alta Vista (www.altavista.com) and HotBot (www.hotbot.com).

You may be required to use special characters, such as "&" for "and." Sometimes, you can use a truncation character to signify any ending to a word, for example, "educat*" for "educate," "education," "educational," educating," "educator," and so on. It is important to know what the rules are for each particular search engine, but some rules of thumb are:

• Use quotation marks around phrases such as "learning resource center" and "Albert Einstein."
• Use all lower-case letters, unless the case is significant, e.g., "Rose Bowl," or SAT.
• Try placing a "plus" sign in front of any words which must appear in the result: e.g., +Renaissance +poetry.

Try one:  Excite   HotBot   Alta Vista   Google   Lycos

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Useful Pages

Useful Pages For Chemeketa Students - http://newterra.chemeketa.edu/library/information/useful/default.htm

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Not-So-Useful Pages

Metaspy