Review a book
Request an item
Searching the Web
There are a variety of general search resources out there for students to use. Each one can fall within one of four categories. Check out the examples of different sites listed below. Remember to choose the one that best suits your information needs.
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Search Engines For unique words, combining terms or very focused searching. Advanced Search screens allow more precision in your searches |
Search Directories Good for browsing for ideas, general concepts or getting an idea for what's available on a topic |
Meta Search Engines Searches other search engines |
Cluster Engines Organizes search results into folders grouping similar items together |
| Google, Google Print (for book content), Google Scholar (for scholarly literature) | About.com | Surfwax | Vivisimo |
| Exalead | RefDesk | Highway 61 | |
| HotBot | Awesome Library | MetaCrawler | Clusty |
| YahooSearch | Digital Librarian | Turbo 10 | |
| AltaVista | CyberDewey | Dogpile | Mooter |
| WiseNut | Karto | GigaBlast | |
| Icerocket | Librarian's Index to the Internet | Ask Jeeves | Clush |
| All the Web | Yahoo | Vivisimo | |
| Ask | Brainboost | ithaki |
| Special search engines | Picture/Media | Art of Searching | Search strategies |
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CiteSeer (who's citing whom in scientific publication), OJOSE (Science Journals), AllSearchEngines (foreign language) |
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Scirus (science) http://scirus.com |
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SearchEric.org (education) http://searcheric.org |
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SOSIG (Social Sciences) http://www.sosig.ac.uk/ |
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HUMBUL (Humanities) http://www.humbul.ac.uk/ |
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Biography Center http://www.biography-center.com/ |
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PSIGate: Physical Science Information Gateway http://www.psigate.ac.uk/ |
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GESource (Geography Gateway) http://www.gesource.ac.uk/home.html |
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Peter's PolySearch Engines (Dictionaries, Biographies, Reference) |
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National Science Digital Library http://nsdl.org, RedLightGreen (for books) |
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Adobe PDF Search http://searchpdf.adobe.com/ |
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AgriSurf! - The Farmers Search Engine http://www.agrisurf.com/agrisurfscripts/agrisurf.asp |
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Animal Search http://animalsearch.net/ |
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Ask A+ Locator (for experts) http://www.vrd.org/locator/ |
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American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html |
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Best History Sites http://www.besthistorysites.net |
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Biography Center http://www.biography-center.com/ |
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Direct Search (for databases not covered by the search engines) http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm |
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Education Databases http://www.internets.com/seducati.htm |
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FindArticles.com (for full-text magazine articles back to 1998) http://www.findarticles.com/PI/index.jhtml |
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FindLaw http://findlaw.com/ |
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Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com |
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Invisible Web (for finding information hidden in thousands of databases) http://www.invisibleweb.com |
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lexisONE (legal information) http://lexisone.com/html/index_home.html |
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Liszt (for finding a-email discussion group) http://www.liszt.com |
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LLEK Bookmarks http://www.scientific-search-engines.com/ |
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Literary Criticism Collection (Internet Public Library) http://www.ipl.org/ref/litcrit/ |
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Literary History http://www.literaryhistory.com An index to free articles on English and American literature, mixed bag of scholarly and popular |
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NatureServe Explorer http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/ |
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NARA Search http://www.archives.gov/search/index.html |
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RecipeSource http://www.recipesource.com/ |
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Scirus (science search engine) http://scirus.com/ |
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SciNet Science Search http://www.scinet.cc/ |
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SOSIG (Social Sciences) http://www.sosig.ac.uk/ |
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HUMBUL (Humanities) http://www.humbul.ac.uk/ |
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Tile.net (listservs) http://tile.net/lists/ |
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Traffick: The Guide to the Portals http://www.traffick.com/ |
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Ultimate Band List (bands, musicians, lyrics) http://www.ubl.com |
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xrefer (reference) http://www.xrefer.com |
*Remember: Be careful about copyright, especially when publishing on the Web! Ask for permission to use and cite any image that is not public domain. Look here for links to Public Domain images for Web pages.
MajorMedia Search Tools
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Choosing the Best Search Tool (Debbie Abilock) http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html |
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Finding Information on the Internet (Berkeley) http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html |
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How to Choose a Search Engine or Directory http://library.albany.edu/internet/choose.html |
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Information Literacy Lessons (Bob Eiffert) http://www.beiffert.net/wordpress/index.php?cat=6 |
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Information Searcher Cybertours http://www.infosearcher.com/cybertours/ |
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Internet Tutorials (U. Albany) http://library.albany.edu/internet/ |
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Internet Web Text Index http://www.december.com/web/text/ |
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KidsClick! Worlds of Searching http://www.rcls.org/wows/ |
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Power Reporting: A Web Searching Tutorial http://powerreporting.com/altavista.html |
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RDN: Virtual Training Suite http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/ |
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Scout Toolkit http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/toolkit/index.html |
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Search Engine Showdown http://searchengineshowdown.com/ |
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Search Engine Watch http://www.searchenginewatch.com |
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Searchability.com http://www.searchability.com/ |
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Soople (teaches Google's advanced features) |
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Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed http://library.rider.edu/scholarly/rlackie/Invisible/Inv_Web.html |
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2Learn How to Search http://www.2learn.ca/research/search.html |
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WebSearch @ About.com http://websearch.about.com |
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webTeacher - http://www.webteacher.org/ |
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Yahooligans! Teaching Search Strategies http://www.yahooligans.com/tg/search.html |
If you are not happy with your results, try another search engine; check your spelling; or try synonyms or related, broader or narrower terms. By all means, use some strategy. Though they have many quirks, most engines allow users the following advanced techniques.
| Search strategy | Explanation | Example |
| Boolean Operators | AND limits your search,
requires that both or all words appear OR is used to capture synonyms or related words NOT eliminates possibilities that you suspect will cause problems Some search engines use + and - for AND and NOT Several search engines (e.g., Google) assume an AND between words |
Vietnam AND
protest AND students Japan AND cooking car OR automobile coronary OR heart Martin Luther NOT King China NOT dishes
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| Wildcards | An asterisk (*) or a questionmark (?) may be used to stand for any character or string of characters. | teen* (picks
up teenage, teenagers, or teens) Herz? (for Herzegovina) wom?n (for woman or women) |
| Natural Language Searches | Some search engines allow you to type in questions as you would think or speak them. | Why is the sky blue? |
| Phrases | Words often are not meaningful in your search unless they appear near each other in a document. In large documents, words separated by lots of text are generally unrelated. ADJ specifies that two words appear next to each other. NEAR/25 specifies that two words appear within 25 words of each other. | global ADJ
warming Eric Clapton NEAR/10 Cream
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| Field Searching | This feature restricts searches to certain portions of Web documents. It allows you to specify that the search words appear in the title, URL, or first paragraph. | title: cancer URL: epa |
| Case Sensitivity | Most search engines are case insensitive by default. However, there are some that recognize uppercase and lowercase variations. | Baker
(retrieves name and eliminates reference to cake and bread makers) AIDS (eliminates reference to helpers) China (eliminates references to dishes) |
From Power Tools: 100+ Essential Forms and Presentations for Your School Library Information Program by Joyce Kasman Valenza. Copyright 1998 American Library Association. Used by permission of ALA Editions. Reproduction for nonprofit educational purposes permitted.