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Jungle HomeLesson
Three HomePfau
Library
 Searching
the Web
Search Tools Defined  THERE
ARE two major types of search tools–subject directories and search
engines.SUBJECT
DIRECTORIES
Subject
directories are lists of links arranged by subject. These links
may be either to individual Web sites or to a collection of Web sites
on a particular subject. The best subject directories are put together
by professors or other experts, such as librarians, who can claim substantial
knowledge of the subject area in question and who understand the requirements
of academic research. There may be annotations for each link–a
brief paragraph that describes and sometimes evaluates the site.
Frequently ratings will be assigned based on how closely a site matches
a list of established criteria. In other words, someone who knows
what they are doing has saved you lots of time by selecting only quality
sites.Problems With Subject Directories Not
all subject directories are scholarly or even selective, so you must be
careful which ones you use. Anybody who wants to can a get their
Web site listed in many directories. Other subject directories are
selective, but the criteria are based on how popular a site is or how
"cool" it is rather than a meaningful evaluation of the site's content
and features. Subject directories recommended by The Information
Jungle and detailed instructions for their use appear in Lesson Four.Finding What You Need in a Subject Directory All
subject directories are browseable, that is to say you can look through
a list of the sites by subject and sometimes by title as well. Many
also are searchable, but there is a catch–you will not be able to
search the complete text of the sites themselves, only the records that
have been created for them in the subject directory. So you will
be searching titles, subjects, keywords, and the full text of any annotations.
If the people behind the subject directory know what they are doing,
this is not a problem because they will have done a good job providing
enough access points (titles, subjects, keywords, etc.) for each site.SEARCH
ENGINES
A search
engine is a computer program specially designed for searching the text
on the Internet. Search engines use a variety of automatic programs
called spiders, crawlers, 'bots, etc., to electronically index the full
text of Web sites. When you enter a search in a search engine, it
draws on this index in order to select the sites that satisfy your search
statement. Problems With Search Engines There
are many search engines, but none are capable of searching the entire
Web. They are only able to search the portion that they have gathered
and processed via automatic means.Some
search engines are larger than others, some are more sophisticated.
Each takes a different approach to performing its task, so the types of
searches you are able to do and the commands you use to do them will vary.Since
no single search engine searches all of the Web, you should run the same
search in two or three of them if you need to be comprehensive. However,
you may find enough useful material by searching just one.Expect
to retrieve large numbers of results most of the time. As a general
rule, if you do not find anything useful in the first two or three pages
of results, it is a better use of your time to come up with a different
search strategy, try another search engine, or use another type of resource
entirely (ask a librarian for advice), rather than to continue looking
through page after page of results. Remember that many of the search
engines will place the sites that best fulfill your search statement at
the beginning of the list so the farther on you go, the less likely you
are to find what you're looking for.You
should also expect a good portion of your search results to not be what
you are looking for. Think of it this way, although it is possible
to find the word, "pencil," in a dictionary, the dictionary is not a book
about pencils. All a search engine does is find matches between your
search terms and terms appearing in the Web sites. Learning to construct
good searches will help to a certain degree, but will not eliminate the
problem entirely.Search
engines recommended by The Information Jungle and detailed instructions
for their use appear in Lesson Five. After you are familiar with
these, you might like to experiment with some others. Do keep in
mind though, that it is better to learn to use two or three of the best
search engines very well rather than to use many search engines poorly.Meta Search Engines Meta
search engines allow you to search several search engines at once.
In this case, however, more is not better. Most searches done on
regular search engines retrieve far more sites than you will have time
to go through. In a meta search engine this is multiplied many times
over. There also are problems with search accuracy since the meta
search engine has to "translate" your search statement for each
different engine. |
