Tips On Searching the Internet

In addition to the many print resources offered from books and periodicals, there is a growing wealth of information available in electronic form. Online periodical databases provide you with an easy to use web-based format for locating magazine, journal and newspapers articles. These articles are from reputable publishers and are sometimes refereed, or recommended by professionals in their subject field. You can feel confident in the quality of articles found in these electronic databases.

The Internet also provides information in electronic form but may take a little more skill and judgment to find the same quality of materials that you found in the journal and newspaper databases. Anyone that has access to a computer and an Internet connection can be a publisher. There is good quality information on the Internet, but there are also many links that
are a total waste of your time. Here are some ideas to help you through the tangled web:

Search Engines, Directories and Portals

Search engines are Internet programs that search documents for specific keywords and return the results list of documents as links. You can then click on these links to see your documents.  You may have only a few links or may have thousands of links depending on what search engine and keywords you have used.

There are four basic differences in search engines: 

Single Search Engines search only the documents contained in that search engine.  Each search engine is different and the information they provide may also be different.  This type of search is good if you are searching for general information.  Examples of single search engines are: Alta Vista and Google.

MetaSearch Engines search several other search engines at the same time and display the results for each of them.  No one MetaSearch engine will search the entire Internet. This type of search is good if you are searching for specific or hard to find information. Examples of MetaSearch engines are Dogpile and Metacrawler.

Subject Directories are selected websites organized into subject hierarchies, or broad subject categories. These directories go from a broad subject to specific information in that subject, such as from General Science to Introductory Cell Biology. Yahoo is the best known and most successful subject directory.

Web Portals   - according to Webopedia.com , web portals are, “A Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, and on-line shopping malls. The first Web portals were online services, such as AOL, that provided access to the Web, but by now most of the traditional search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience”.  

Practice Search

Try searching for a famous author, such as “Stephen King”, using each of the search engines mentioned above and compare your results. You should have a wide variety of results.

Helpful Hint:

When you enter your keywords it sometimes helps to put them in parentheses. This will limit your search results to those keywords that are found together in documents. By limiting your search results you are getting specific information and not thousands of documents that are unrelated. Try it using the keywords below!

Search for “Community Colleges” with parentheses, and then Community Colleges without parentheses using the same search engine and compare the number and types of results. They should be very different. One search should give you many more links than the other one. Which one do you think gives the most relevant information?

The Internet can be an excellent resource to research government information, medical information and current statistics. Scientific literature is also increasingly available in electronic form. You can search for nearly any kind of information on the web, but be sure to critically evaluate what you find.

Boolean Searching

You may want to search for more than one keyword at a time. One of the best ways to search for multiple keywords is to use Boolean operators. This is really much easier than it sounds. Boolean operators use the words AND and OR to connect keywords in your search. Using an AND, for example, will search for both of the keywords you have typed into the search box.

For example: I want to search for "violence" and "children" . The best way to search for both of these terms is to combine them with an AND.

For example: violence AND children

This search would give me links with both violence and children because I have used both terms with a capital AND. Using all capitals like, AND and OR will tell the search engine to not look for the Boolean operators as keywords.

Another hint is to use the word NOT in your search. Let’s say the topic of my research paper is viral diseases, but I’m getting many links containing bacterial diseases that I don’t want. I can then add the word NOT to my search and eliminate all the documents with the word bacteria in them.

Example: viral AND disease NOT bacteria

This search should display only links for viral diseases.

Practice Search

Try a search in two of the above search engines, one single search engine and one metasearch engine using the keywords above, or any other keywords of your choice. See how the results are different when you use Boolean operators.

Internet Addresses

Another way to narrow your search results is to look at the links and see where the information is coming from. The URL or Internet address can tell you instantly where the information came from and can give you a good idea of the quality of the document. The extensions, or endings or the addresses are important.

Here is a listing of several extensions and what they mean:

.edu = this page comes from an educational institution and is probably written by a professional educator. The main purpose is to educate you about the college, school or a particular program. Educational institutions are usually a good source of information. Be sure that you are not reading a student webpage. These may also be labled as .edu.
Here are some good examples:  

     Chandler-Gilbert Community College
     http://www.cgc.maricopa.edu

     Arizona State University East
     http://www.east.asu.edu  

.org =  this page was developed by an organization or association and is probably written to inform you of the organization’s mission, goals and publications. Organizations are usually a good source of information, but be careful to evaluate the site for bias.

Examples are:

     American Library Association
     http://www.ala.org/

     American Civil Liberties Union
     http://www.aclu.org/

     The Sierra Club
     http://www.sierraclub.org/  

.gov = this page was written by a department of  the United States Government and is intended to inform the reader of government information. This is usually a good source of information. Examples are:  

     The Library of Congress
     http://lcweb.loc.gov/

     United States Postal Service
     http://www.usps.gov/  

.com = this page was developed by a commercial organization or business and probably intends to persuade you to purchase something. Sometimes .coms can be a good source of information, but they must be evaluated very carefully for authority, bias and accuracy.  Examples are:  

     AutoWeb.com
     http://www.autoweb.com

     Arizona Highways Online
     http://www.arizonahighways.com

     Landsend.com
     http://www.landsend.com

Need help??

If you find that you are not getting the search results you need, you should click the search engines’ help screens. All search engines and databases have help screens and directions to make searching easier for you. If you need additional help or have questions, please call theChandler-Gilbert Community College Library @ 480-857-5100 and a librarian will be happy to help you.