Online Web SearchingHow to Find and Evaluate

Online Information

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Before You Start1. Analyze your topic to decide where to begin2. Pick the right starting place3. Vary your approach4. Don’t bog down with strategy that doesn’t

work5. Return to previous strategies better

informed

(give 1st handout)

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Search ToolsSearch EnginesSubject DirectoriesMeta-Search EnginesInvisible Web

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Search EnginesGoogle is currently the most used search engine. It has

the largest database of Web pages. Google’s ‘popularity’ ranking often places worthwhile pages near the top of the search results. However not everything on the Web is fully searchable in Google. So, if you can’t find what you are looking for in Google, try…

Yahoo Search is a HUGE site. Claims over 20 billion total ‘web objects’

Exalead a big site claiming over 8 billion searchable pages.

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

How Do Search Engines Work?Search engines do not really search the World Wide Web directly.

Each searches a database of web pages that it has harvested and cached. The databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders. These ‘crawl’ the web looking for pages for potential inclusion by following links on pages already in the database. [If a web page is never linked from any other page, search engine spiders cannot find it].

Once the page is found it is passed on to another program for ‘indexing’. This program identifies the text, links, and other content in the page and stores it in the search engine database’s files to that the database can be searched by keyword and whatever more advanced approaches are offered, and the page will be found if your search matches its content.

(give 2nd handout)

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Subject DirectoriesIPL2 over 40,000 highest quality sites only. IPL2 formed by a

merger of the Librarians’ Internet Index and the Internet Public Library

Infomine over 125,00 useful, reliable annotations. Compiled by academic librarians form the University of California and elsewhere.

About.com over 2 million generally good annotations compiled by ‘guides’ with various levels of expertise.

Google Directory about 5 million selected by the ODP and enhanced by Google searching and ranking.

Yahoo about 4 million. Very short descriptions. Often used for popular and commercial topics.Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley

Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Meta-Search EngineYippyDogpileSurfwaxCopernic

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Try a Custom Search EngineCustom Search Engine.Com a large number and variety of custom search engines. Easy to use. Searchable. Most have brief descriptions.

Invisible Web AKA Deep WebThe ‘visible’ web is what you can find using general web

search engines and some subject directories.The ‘invisible’ web is what you can’t find using these tools.Some ‘invisible’ material includes:

Contents of searchable databases (the computer bots and crawlers can’t enter passwords or complete a search box).

Excluded pages (i.e. library catalog searches, public-record databases, or pages excluded by their owners).

To find out more check out the Wikipedia article on the ‘deep web’

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Why Evaluate the WebThe World Wide Web can be a great place to accomplish

research on many topics. But putting documents or pages on the web is easy, cheap or free, unregulated, and unmonitored (at least in the USA). There is a famous Steiner cartoon published in the New Yorker (July 5, 1993) with two dogs sitting before a terminal looking at a computer screen; one says to the other "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The great wealth that the Internet has brought to so much of society is the ability for people to express themselves, find one another, exchange ideas, discover possible peers worldwide they never would have otherwise met, and, through hypertext links in web pages, suggest so many other people's ideas and personalities to anyone who comes and clicks. There are some real "dogs" out there, but there's also great treasure.

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

The RationaleTherein lies the rationale for evaluating carefully whatever you

find on the Web. The burden is on you - the reader - to establish the validity, authorship, timeliness, and integrity of what you find. Documents can easily be copied and falsified or copied with omissions and errors -- intentional or accidental. In the general World Wide Web there are no editors (unlike most print publications) to proofread and "send it back" or "reject it" until it meets the standards of a publishing house's reputation. Most pages found in general search engines for the web are self-published or published by businesses small and large with motives to get you to buy something or believe a point of view. Even within university and library web sites, there can be many pages that the institution does not try to oversee. The web needs to be free like that!! And you, if you want to use it for serious research, need to cultivate the habit of healthy skepticism, of questioning everything you find with critical thinking.

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Evaluating Web PagesThink CriticallyThink SuspiciouslyQuestion what you findQuestion who is providing the information

and why

(give 3rd handout)

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Questions to AskIs this someone’s personal web page?What type domain does it come from?Who published the page?Does this entity make sense?Who wrote the page?What are the author’s credentials?Is it dated and is that date current?

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

More QuestionsAre sources documented with footnotes or

links?Are there links to other resources on the

topic?What other sites link to this page? (use

alexa.com to check)

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Still More QuestionsWhy was the page put on the web?Is it ironic? Satire or Parody?Is this as credible or useful as resources in

print or online through the library?

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Some ExamplesBacon UnwrappedCancer StoryMelanoma treatmentMerck Manual

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

Questions

Information in this presentation taken from the University of California at Berkeley Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

ResourcesFinding Information on the Internet: A

Tutorial http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html

John’s Hopkins University http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/

Wikipedia “Deep Web” article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_web