Internet Searching Tools and Techniques Presentation

NANOSCALE GUIDE TO POWER TOOLS FOR ONLINE RESEARCH
Presentation for the San Jose IBM PC Club - August 10, 2004
John Hogle -  jjhogle@yahoo.com





INFORMATION COMES IN ALL TYPES, SHAPES, SIZES, MEDIA, AND DELIVERY METHODS


SIZE MATTERS


SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY THAT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW


WHAT YOU PERSONALLY NEED TO DO


SEARCH ENGINES - SELECT "ADVANCED" FROM THE BASIC PAGE
  • Google Advanced 
google.com Billions of Web pages plus other files.
  • AlltheWeb Advanced 
alltheweb.com Billions of Web pages plus other files.
  • AltaVista Advanced 
altavista.com Smaller but still powerful.
  • Teoma Advanced 
teoma.com Smaller but still powerful.

METASEARCH TOOLS - SEARCHES MULTIPLE SEARCH ENGINES (BUT NOT AS WELL) - EXAMPLES
  • Vivisimo 
vivisimo.com Clusters results into subject folders.
  • SurfWax 
surfwax.com Also uses some "deep" Web databases.

INTERNET INDEXES - MANUALLY CREATED AND SMALLER THAN SEARCH ENGINES - EXAMPLES
  • InfoMine 
infomine.ucr.edu Academic index from UC Riverside Library.
  • Librarian's Index 
lii.org Index assembled by volunteer librarians.
  • Open Directory 
dmoz.org  Largest index created by volunteers.

HIDDEN INTERNET/WEB -ALL TYPES OF SEARCHABLE DATABASES & OTHER "HIDDEN" INFORMATION.
  • CompletePlanet 
completeplanet.com 70K+ databases and specialized search tools.
  • Internet Archive 
archive.org Archiving the entire Internet/Web.

SPECIALIZED SEARCH TOOLS - EXAMPLES
  • Scientific citations 
  • CiteSeer 
citeseer.ist.psu.edu/ Part of the movement to putting primary, quality peer-reviewed research information on the Web.
  • Images 
  • Google 
google.com Claims over 800 million images in its database.
  • AlltheWeb 
alltheweb.com
  • Audio & video files 
  • AlltheWeb 
alltheweb.com
  • Altavista 
altavista.com
  • Newsgroups 
  • Google Groups 
google.com Remember Deja News? This is it reborn.
  • Shopping 
  • Froogle 
froogle.com A price search engine using Google's database.
  • Google Catalogs 
catalog.google.com Full page images of over 1500 print catalogs are online and searchable.
  • Shopper.com 
shopper.com An example of a shopping bot.
  • BookFinder 
bookfinder.com A shopping bot for books.
  • Ready Reference 
  • Merriam-Webster 
merriam-webster.com Dictionaries and more.
  • Wikipedia 
wikipedia.org Cooperative, giant encyclopedia in many languages. Will it replace Britannica? Be critical of the quality.
  • InfoPlease 
infoplease.com The full text of the almanac online with other resources.
  • Bartleby 
bartleby.com A variety of useful resources.
  • Medical 
  • PubMed 
www.nlm.nih.gov Your federal tax dollars doing good in the best medical database around.
  • Legal 
  • FindLaw 
findlaw.com Links to numerous legal databases & other resources.
  • Financial 
  • BankRate 
bankrate.com Find the best loan, savings, money market, CD rates.
  • Morningstar 
morningstar.com Find and analyze the mutual funds best suited to your goals and attitudes.

COMMERCIAL DATABASES

Quality, edited material at your fingertips. Most libraries subscribe to several databases.
  • SJPL/SJSU King Library 
sjlibrary.org You can get 30 or so databases just with a SJPL card, but at the King Library itself, you can access 100-200 different databases because of SJSU subscriptions.
  • HighBeam Research 
highbeam.com Sometimes information is worth paying for.
  • Find Articles 
findarticles.com Sometimes it is free.

LIBRARIES - WANT TO GET AS MANY AS FIVE MILLION DIFFERENT BOOKS AT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY?

RESOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION
  • Tutorials from UC Berkeley 
lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html
  • Search Engine Showdown 
searchengineshowdown.com

FINAL ADVICE