Internet Searching Strategies

Contents

  1. Formulating a Strategy
  2. Maximizing Your Search Results
  3. Evaluating Internet Resources
  4. Citing Internet Resources

Formulating a Strategy

  1. Decide if your topic is likely to be addressed on the Internet. You will find excellent Internet resources for:
    • Computers, engineering, physics.
    • Natural sciences.
    • Government information.
    • Product/business information.
    • Popular culture.

You will find less information (although this is rapidly changing) about:

  1. Decide on how current materials have to be to suit your needs.
    • Expect to find mostly current information on the Internet.
    • However, the expectation is that information posted on the Internet will be updated frequently--often, it is not.
    • Expect to find some older materials, particularly materials whose copyright has expired (usually more than 75 years old).
  2. Choose a type of Internet resource that will reflect what you need.
    • For a search of many, many Internet resources, choose HotBot (www.hotbot.com).
    • To search resources by subject area, choose Yahoo (www.yahoo.com).
    • To search several WWW indexes at the same time, try MetaCrawler (www.metacrawler.com).
    • To locate software, select Archie (www.lerc.nasa.gov).
    • To find a telnet address of a library catalog, choose HyTelnet (galaxy.einet.net/hytelnet/HYTELNET.html).
    • To browse Internet mailing lists, select Liszt (www.liszt.com).
    • To search usenet news, try DejaNews (www.dejanews.com).
    • To find an email address, search WhoWhere? (www.whowhere.com).
    • To translate a web page from one language to another, try Alta Vista Translation Service (babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate?).
    • See the searching quickguide (riceinfo.rice.edu/Fondren/Netguides/quickguide.html) for more specific information.
    • For updates on search engines and their features, go to Search Engine Watch (searchenginewatch.com)
  3. Narrow your search.
    • Checking the sites the search engine returned will automatically narrow your search! Since many of the search engines do not regularly update their links, some of the sites they return will no longer be available.
    • Almost all the search engines feature a link to an "advanced search," with instructions on how to combine or eliminate terms.
    • Most of the search engines rank the occurrence of terms so that, if you type in college scholarship, you will get the pages with the most matches on both of those terms first. Usually, you will see a percentage, indicating how closely the words on the page match your search terms.
    • Some of the search engines use OR as a default. This means that you will get a list of sites that include one of any of the terms you used to search. If you search for blue moon, you will get a list of sites for blue suede shoes, moon pies, etc.
    • To retrieve sites with all the terms you have entered, try AND or +. To eliminate terms, try NOT or -. To search for a phrase, try WITH or put quotation marks around it ("blue moon").
    • Most of the search engines will ignore and, not, with, adj in the lowercase.
    • Vary your vocabulary. Try cyan, azure, or cornflower instead of blue.
    • Vary your spelling. The Internet is a global network, so, to search on the word color, try color and colour, and maybe even Farbe or couleur.
    • Truncate your words, usually with a * (for instance, color* will turn up coloring, colors, colorized).

Maximizing Your Search Results

  1. Search within site itself.
    • Many sites offer internal search engines, that is, search features that will look throughout a collection of web pages.
  2. Hack down the URL of a good site.
  3. Alter the URL.
    • Change http:// to gopher:// or ftp:// and you may discover text files or software at the site.
  4. Save your search.
    • If the address contains "cgi-bin", you should be able to bookmark it and return to it later.

Evaluating Internet Resources

  1. Look at the URL to determine what type of organization produced the site.
    • .com is a commercial site.
    • .edu is an academic site.
    • .gov is a government site.
    • .org is usually a non-profit organization.
    • .net is a networked service provider.
    • .mil is a military site.

Country/Region-Specific Domain names:

  1. Look at the URL to determine who produced the site (or who posted it, at least).
    • ~name is usually someone's name, or part of their name.
    • You can try to look them up by partial name and institution in WhoWhere? (www.whowhere.com).
  2. Consider the following questions.
    • Is an author listed?
    • What are the credentials of the author?
    • Is there a bias or a commercial interest?
    • Who is the intended audience of the page?
    • How current is the information?
    • Are references, citations, or links to other resources included?
  3. Look at other reviews.
    • Magellan (http://magellan.excite.com/).

Citing Internet Resources

  1. List the author's name, if it is given.
  2. List the title of the page.
  3. List the URL.
  4. Indicate the date you visited the page (Web pages often do not list the date they were created or updated, so this is a way of indicating how current the information may be).
  5. For more specific information, refer to online style guides for citing electronic sources.