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Search Engines and Other Animals

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Partly funded by the

http://www.netskills.ac.uk/

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TopicsThe web as an information sourceTypes of search site:

Search engines Metasearch Engines Classified directories Subject gateways Invisible web Specialised sources

What to use when?

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The Web: What's Out There? Online books Electronic journals Bibliographic databases Full-text materials

Personal home pages Discussion groups & mailing lists Audio, video, images Interactive resources Free & subscription services

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The Internet As An Information Resource

Advantages Up-to-date Access at point of use Accessible 24 hours a day Access to a wide variety of

information sources

Disadvantages Quality? Lack of organisation Poor search tools? Limited help

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Sites for Finding Information On The Web

Search Engines Metasearch Engines Classified Directories Subject Gateways Invisible web Specialised sources

Note: Some sites offer more than one way to search

uk.yahoo.com

www.intute.ac.uk

www.google.co.uk

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Search EnginesAutomated indexing of (lots of)

web pagesSearched by keyword Find lots of information Results ranked by relevancyGood for specific queries Too much information?

www.google.co.uk

www.alltheweb.com

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Metasearch EnginesEnable you to search across a number of

(commercial) search services simultaneouslyIncreases proportion of web searched Usually remove duplicate resultsMay have limited query language

www.metacrawler.com

www.dogpile.com

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Classified DirectoriesHuman-compiled general

subject listing of resourcesCommercial or academicBrowsable and searchableSearches catalogue record -

not web pages themselvesGood for general queriesFind fewer but higher quality

resourcesdir.yahoo.com

www.lii.org

www.bubl.ac.uk

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Subject GatewaysA subject-specific

classified directoryContain high quality resources

selected by subject specialistsGood for general queries

Intute (formerly the Resource Discovery Network) www.intute.ac.uk

Subject Gateways collectionwww.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html

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The 'Invisible' or 'Deep' WebNot accessible by web search

engine spiders Information held in databases Very recent sites Different file types (eg PDF, Word) Information beyond search engines index limit

(eg may only index first 200 words on page)

Use directory sites to find 'invisible' sourcesFind out more:library.albany.edu/internet/deepweb.html

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What to use when?Search Engines

If you have a very specific query If you need lots of information

Metasearch Engines If you have a very specific query If you want to increase the proportion of the web searched If you're not worried about creating a very complex search

query

Classified Directories & Subject Gateways If you have a general information need If you want to browse through structured information If you want higher quality information

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SummaryThere are a number of

different tools available for searching the web

The tool you choose to use will depend on your information needs

You may need to use more than one tool to find the information you need

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Note for Hands-On Session

Try searches used in the workbook then…

Try searches using your own keywords