War And Society in the Twentieth Century
AGE 306
War And Society in the Twentieth Century
AGE 306
Not all search engines are created equal. Each is designed differently, functions differently, searches different parts of the Internet and gives different search results. How do you chose which one to use?
First of all, maybe you might like to learn how
search engines work:
Search Engines What they Are,
How They Work, and Practical Suggestions for Getting the Most Out of Them
Then maybe you might like to learn about the differences
among search engines:
Search
IQ - Rates and reviews the "intelligence" of most popular search
engines and meta engines.
Search Engine Watch - Describes
some of the top search engines.
Next, you will choose one or more search engines or meta search engines to use for your search:
Internet Tools and Sites - brought to you by the librarians at Elmhurst College.
Search
Engine Strategies
Not all search engines function the same. Reading the "help" or "tips"
screens will help you understand how a search engine functions and how to create
the most effective searches. Does your search engine allow the use of :
* Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT (world war one OR ww1 AND memoirs)
* Quotation marks " " to keep words in a phrase in order ("world
war two")
* Special symbols like +, *, ! or - for truncation, proximity, adjacent words
or plurals
So now that you understand how to put words together in the search engine, what words should you use?
*Try using language of the discipline or subject you are researching.
*Use terms that are narrow and precise - this helps eliminate "garbage
results".
*Try to avoid terms with multiple meanings - the search engine doesn't know
which meaning you want.
*Synonyms are your best friends. If one term doesn't work, try another word
with a similar meaning.
*Spelling counts.
Internet
Subject Directories
An Internet Subject Directory is another tool that you can
use to locate resources on the Internet. It differs from a search engine in
many ways.
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Subject Directory
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Search Engine
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Useful for a broad topic or idea
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Useful for narrow topic or item
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Links are organized by topic/subject
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Links are disorganized and uncategorized
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Smaller number of links to choose from
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Millions of links to choose from
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Links chosen for inclusion by live subject experts
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Links retrieved by machines
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Click on appropriate topic to find sites
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Construct search to find sites
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High-quality, high-content sites
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Could be low-content, untrustworthy sites
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Few pop-up or banner ads
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Potentially lots of ads and commercial sites
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Here are a few Internet subject directories that you can try out:
About.com
Digital Librarian
InfoMine
Librarians' Index to the Internet
WWW Virtual Librarian
Now that you know which search engine to use and how to construct an effective search, how do you know if the sites that you have found are any good? Are they reliable? Scholarly?
Five Criteria
for Evaluating Web Sites - from Cornell University Library
Thinking
Critically About World Wide Web Resources - UCLA College Library
Don't forget to properly cite your Internet resources. It is an important part of the research process.
Writing
& Citing - from the friendly librarians at Elmhurst College
Resources
for Documenting Electronic Resources - from Purdue's Online Writing Lab
Last modifed on 23 July, 2002 and created on 17 July, 2002
by Jennifer Paliatka, Assistant Reference/Instruction Librarian,
A.C. Buehler Library, Elmhurst College