Internet Searching |
Best Search Tools | Which Tool? | What's the Difference? | More Tools
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What's This? The Best Search Tools page shows three different types of search tools: search engines, metasearch engines, and subject directories. See below for details. These tools are just examples, not the only ones available. How to Evaluate a Web Site: Is it good enough? |
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Use a search engine or directory to find web sites on a topic. No single search engine can find all web sites on a topic, so you may have to try several search engines to get relevant information. The NoodleTools directory can get you started.
What's the Difference? Breadth vs Depth
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Search engines, like Google, are computer programs that automatically filter and classify the strings of characters that you enter into a search box. The compiled results are purely computer-generated, with no humans involved. So it's possible to get a lot of hits, but very little in-depth good quality information on your topic.
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Meta-search engines, like Vivisimo, send your topic to several search engines at once and compile the results into one list. Some of these engines even cluster the results by relevance (as defined by computerized methods), to make it easier for you to select what you need. Still, these tools lack the depth that a human expert can give on the subject.
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Subject directories, like Librarians Internet Index, are an organized collection of web sites selected by people-- sort of like librarians cataloging books. Result lists are sorted into a hierarchy, depending on how they are classified. Because it takes time to look at and classify web sites, subject directories usually look at tens of thousands of sites, instead of the millions automatically crawled by search engine spiders. So you get fewer hits (breadth) but more depth of knowledge on a topic.
Need more tools?
These can help you get started on your research, define a term, or give a topic overview.
About.com
California Digital Library at University of California
First Gov A U.S. federal government portal
Internet Public Library
Library of Congress
Library Research Handouts (Mesa College)
Scout Report Archives
WebRef (Mesa College)
WWW Virtual Library
A selective list of Internet sites