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Finding quality information on the Internet

Finding quality information on the Internet. Kate Alderson-Smith Oxford University Library Services. Session Objectives. An overview of the types of web search tools available Review of the functionality and focus of different search tools Summary of helpful search techniques

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Finding quality information on the Internet

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  1. Finding quality information on the Internet Kate Alderson-Smith Oxford University Library Services

  2. Session Objectives • An overview of the types of web search tools available • Review of the functionality and focus of different search tools • Summary of helpful search techniques • Review evaluation techniques for judging results • Introduction to the principles of citing e-resources

  3. Web basics • Size • Organisation • Scope • What are you really searching? • Deep/Invisible web

  4. Primary search tools • Search engines • General – google • Specific – google scholar • Meta-search engines • Directories / gateways • Reference

  5. Search Engines Database of web resources collected by robots/spiders/web crawler • Size and scope • Interface and ease of searching • Ranking of results • Advance searching functionality

  6. Search Engines Major players • Google [US and UK versions] • Google scholar [www.scholar.google.com] • Yahoo search [www.yahoo.com or co.uk] • Ask Jeeves [www.ask.com or co.uk] • Teoma [www.teoma.com] N.B. Many search engines use other engine’s databases alltheweb & Lycos = Yahoo

  7. Search Engines • Advantages: • index a large proportion of the public web • word for word indexing • easy to use and available • Disadvantages • databases created automatically • no quality control • different advance searching techniques • public pages only • huge number of ‘hits’ generated

  8. Search techniques: Review • Too many results? Add more concepts, link terms, search in a particular field i.e. title, limit to UK pages – advance searching options • Too few results? Broaden your search terms, add alternate phrases, try a meta-search engine • Are you searching in the right place?

  9. Meta-search engines a tool that searches across a number of individual search engines retrieving the ‘top’ results from each • Vivisimo [www.visisimo.com] • Clusty [www.clusty.com] • Metacrawler [www.metacrawler.com] • Dogpile [www.dogpile.com]

  10. Meta-search engines • Advantages • search across a number of engines using a single interface • can save time searching • more of the web searched • duplicates removed • Disadvantages • difficult to limit searches • search engine coverage

  11. Directories/indexes Lists of web resources group together in a structured manner • Open directory [general] • Yahoo [general] • WWW Virtual Library [general/academic] • British Academy Portal [academic] • Infomine [academic]

  12. Directories/indexes • Advantages • created by people who have evaluated the sites • subject structure allowing browsing • smaller and more manageable than engines • general and academic directories • Disadvantages • browsing can return a long list of sites • difficult to identify what category you need to search in • indexed by title rather than word-for-word

  13. Gateways Classified list of resources focused on one particular subject area. Mainly created by professionals for the HE community. Available from the RDN For Humanities, Social Sciences, Engineering, Health and Life sciences, Physical Sciences, Arts and creative industries, and Geography & Environment.

  14. Gateways • Advantages: • contains only high quality sites • detailed subject coverage • focused on resources of value to the academic community • Disadvantages: • often very subject specific • general/popular sites may not be included • specific results retrieve very small or no hits

  15. Searching techniques: Review • Choose the correct tool • Use phrase searching with “” • Be specific, use unique keywords if possible • Link keywords: AND, OR, NOT, –, + • Truncation or wildcard characters * or ? • Use advanced searching to limit results • Use a variety of tools to locate material • Evaluate results

  16. Evaluating results • When? Check currency, when was it produced? • Who? Who is responsible for the information? • Why? Has it been published on the internet? • Where? Where is the page situated? • What? What value is of to you?

  17. Citing web resources • No agreed standard for citing e-resources • Include as much information as possible: author or editor, date. Title of the web page [online]. Place of publication, publisher. Available from: URL [date accessed] • Cite e-material in the same style as you would printed material • Be consistent

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