Intelligent web searching

Laura JeffreyResearcher Training Librarian

Session outline

• Search engines– Types, how they work, interrogating results

• Make your own search engine• Academic resources• Organising, referencing and annotating

Access to tools

• Handouts and slides are available at www.dur.ac.uk/library/research/

• Most of the links mentioned in today’s session are included in the handout

• Or via the web page:www.netvibes.com/intelligentwebsearch#Welcome!

Intelligent web searching

• What are you looking for?– Breadth or precision– Single document or comprehensive coverage

• How are you searching?– Targeted searching• Combining terms = narrow search; AND is assumed• OR, “phrase”, -not, ˜synonym, words**in between,

site:ac.uk, date:months

– Evaluating results

Intelligent web searching

• What are you looking for?• How are you searching?• What tools are you using?– Variety of access points– Range of search engines

Activity

• Using the search engine that you use most often, search for information on:

library history in nineteenth century Britain

Search

Why use another search engine?

• Different results– scale of the web– the hidden web

• Different order– ranking depends on location of word in title,

headings, frequency, proximity

• Different search options

Types of search engine

• Keyword• Directory• Visual results • Real time• Content specific

Netvibes page

Interrogating your results

• Meta-search engines• Comparative search engines

• International search engines

Hands-on

• Carry out searches relevant to your research and use the grid to record your results

• Try a search engine you wouldn’t normally use• Look at the advanced search option• Are there any results that will make you refine

your search?• Does a meta-search engine give you new

results?

Personalised search engines

• Tailor to your needs before you search• Search by keywords, search engines, websites • General e.g. Clusty, Google Custom Search,

Rollyo, Searchbot• Social element e.g. Eurekster and Decipho

Hands-on

• Set up a Google account• Create a Custom Search Engine• Bookmark or add it to your iGoogle homepage• Go back and add more pages• Try a search with it

Academic resources

• Full text, taster or bibliographic details• Virtual libraries– Librarians’ Index to the Internet, WWW Virtual Library

• Generic portals– BUBL, Pinakes, Google Scholar, Infomine, Intute

• Subject portals– TechXtra, BizSeer, Scirus

• Set Google Scholar to find DUL resources

Academic resources

• Books– Google Books, Gutenberg Project, Universal

Library, Alex, Gallica, ORB

• Journal ToCs– ticTOCs, My Favourite Journals , CiteULike Current

Issues, jOPML

Academic resources

Open Access and repositories

• Institutional: DRO, D-space at MIT• Subject specific: ArXiv, British History Online• Harvesters: OAIster, Driver, Google Scholar

Hands-on

• Look at some of the portals and search engines that give you access to academic resources on the web

• Compare these resources with those that you find from search engines

• Do they highlight different/new resources?

Organising the web

• Online Bookmarks available from any computer– General: Backflip, delicious– Academic: bibsonomy, citeulike, Connotea,

Brainify, Zotero

• Collections of useful sites– page flakes, netvibes, Squidoo

Referencing web pages

Author (date or last updated) Title. Available at: URL (Accessed on: date).

Durham University Library (6 November 2009) Intelligent web searching. Available at: http://www.dur.ac.uk/library/research/websearch/ (Accessed on: 13 November 2009).

Annotating the web

• Remember why you bookmarked a page• Highlight, add post-it notes, then bookmark

and share with colleagues

• Diigo, ButterFly, Protonotes, MyStickies, Wizlite

Alerts

Repeat your keyword searches • Google alerts www.google.com/alerts • Yahoo! alerts http://alerts.yahoo.com/

Monitor specific pages e.g. an academic’s profile• Watch that Page www.watchthatpage.com/ • Change detect www.changedetect.com/

Hands on

• Look at organising your web pages using general or academic bookmarking sites

• Set up alerts for keywords or a specific page

Conclusions

• Large number of tools not all as intuitive as Google

• Web searching can become a targeted and time-saving exercise

• Important to organise your findings

But remember… • Web is just part of suite of research tools

Evaluation

Please feedback your thoughts on this sessionwww.survey.bris.ac.uk/durham/websearch100210

More information • Laura Jeffrey – l.k.s.jeffrey@durham.ac.uk or 0191 3342970

• Liaison Librarian for your department– www.dur.ac.uk/library/resources/subject/