Thing 4 - Searching the Web

Purpose:  To learn how to best find information on the web through different search mechanisms. 

 Many people only use Google to search and find information on the Web.  However, it is important to realize that Google does not find everything that is on the Web and there are a variety of different search mechanisms that find different things on things.

For example, the Librarians Index to the Internet (LII) is a directory of websites organized by categories that are reviewed and categorized.  http://lii.org/ .

Searches just for kids include Kidsclick- http://www.kidsclick.org/ and Yahoo! Kids - http://kids.yahoo.com/ .  These searches filter out inappropriate content for kids.

Infomine is a search of scholarly resources. http://infomine.ucr.edu/

Webcrawler http://www.webcrawler.com/ or dogpile http://www.dogpile.com/ are metasearches that use many search mechanisms to find information.

There are visual searches such as Kartoo http://www.kartoo.com/flash.php3  and Clusty - http://clusty.com.

There are incredible resources at the National Archives http://www.archives.gov/ , Library of Congress - http://www.loc.gov/index.html , and the University of California (Calisphere - http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/ )  that are only found through their searches and generally, are not found in a Google search.

As you search the web to find what you want or guide students in doing this, there are a few search tricks to remember:

·         putting “quotes” around a topic narrows your search (for example if you are looking for information about “ancient history of China”, putting just “ancient history” in quotes will focus just on websites that have information about ancient history.  The search would look like this:  “ancient history” China

·         adding a – (minus sign) in front of a word eliminates words when there are multiple meanings (for example, bass could refer to fishing or music).  By putting a minus sign ("-") in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid.  Be sure and put the minus sign right next to the word you want to exclude.  The search would look like this:  bass  –music

·         adding an asterisk * to a word creates a “wild card” character in most searches.  This is good if you’re not sure how a word is spelled.   For example, let’s say we were looking for British information.  Using the asterisk can broaden the search to find all things with the word “Brit” in it.  The search would look like this:  Brit* 

·         Web searches can be used in different languages

Discovery Exercises

First, read a little about search strategies: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/searching/fournets.htm

Second, understand which searches do what:  http://www.infopeople.org/search/chart.html

Finally, complete the Search the Web Webquest - http://clovis23things.pbwiki.com/searchwebwebquest to learn how different searches work.

Blog#4 – What did you discover about Web searches that is important to share with students?