Subject Gateways and Web Servicesfor ResearchAn introduction to search engines (and the pros and cons of Google), internet gateways, usenet groups and RSS feeds, mailing lists and other electronic networking opportunities

Written by Roger Mills and Grazyna CooperPresented by Sue Bird

WISER Focus on

“One of the major issues academics will face over the coming years is how to utilise, and teach students to utilise, the Internet in their research”

Professor Dolowitz (2004) Department of Politics, University of Liverpool

“A high proportion of all staff interviewed tended to rely on the same sources. Work is needed to persuade people to look outside their "comfort zone" for information in order to ensure they are locating the best information for their purposes”.

“Big Blue” Final Report (2004), Manchester Metropolitan University

Well trodden paths…

…finding relevant, high quality, authoritative information on the Internet

The problem

Using search engines• Is Google enough?

— Pros:— Easy— Very fast— Huge scope— Sophisticated search

algorithms

— Cons:— Far too much retrieved— No evaluation— Does not search ‘deep’ web

– databases, priced content etc

— Search algorithms are secret— Can’t save or combine

searches

Google is not enough• So Google have introduced Google Scholar• http://scholar.google.com • Searches some ‘deep web’ content – but we don’t know

what – no list• Can be set up to link direct to locally-available full text• Has new features – ‘cited by’ link, grouping of different

versions, web search, document delivery (BL Search)• But algorithms are still secret• As is frequency of update – slower than Google

Battle of the giants• Microsoft has just entered the fray with Windows Live Academic (http://academic.live.com/)• Competing with Google Scholar• Coverage currently limited to computer science, electrical

engineering and physics from scholarly societies• Coverage list published http://academic.live.com/journals

• Microsoft has just entered the fray with Windows Live Academic (http://academic.live.com/)• Competing with Google Scholar• Coverage currently limited to computer science, electrical

engineering and physics from scholarly societies• Coverage list published http://academic.live.com/journals

Saving & refining searches• Most general search engines don’t allow this• Requires local software e.g. Blue Squirrel’s WebSeeker

- a meta-search engine which saves results to a local database, allowing filtering, combining, e-mailing of results etc

• Or use SCOPUS http://www.scopus.com which searches web sites as well as journal articles and allows export to Endnote etc.

• Some subject-specific databases are adding similar web searching capabilities, but most don’t

Academic subject gatewaysOften better than general search engines:• Link to evaluated resources• Focused on specific subject areas• Up-to-date• Variety of information and services provided• Ability to customise • Useful descriptions of resources

Resource Discovery Network (RDN)• JISC-funded: a free national service for the learning,

teaching and research community• A collection of Internet resources

• 100,000 resources and rising

• Subject-specific services via hubs

• http://www.rdn.ox.ac.uk

8 Existing RDN hubs• ALTIS - Hospitality, Sports, Tourism and Leisure• Artifact - Arts and Creative Industries• BIOME (Health (OMNI) and Life Sciences)• EEVL (Engineering, Maths, Computing)• GEsource - Geography and Environment• HUMBUL (Language, Literature, Archaeology, Philosophy,

History, Theology, Classics)• PSIgate (Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Earth Sciences)• SOSIG (Politics, Law, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology,

Business, Economics, Anthropology, Geography etc)

becoming 4…

www.intute.ac.uk

Evaluate what you findAuthority / Author / SourcePurpose / AudienceCoverage / ScopeAccuracyObjectivity / Point of viewCurrencyDesign / Multimedia etc

Virtual Training Suite (VTS)The RDN Virtual Training Suite teaches you how to use

the Internet more effectively via subject-based tutorials. Forty tutorials are currently available, with more coming along all the time….

Each tutorial has four sections:• TOUR: take a ‘site-seeing’ tour of the Internet for your subject• DISCOVER: how to improve your Internet search skills• REVIEW: learn the skills needed to critically evaluate Web sites• REFLECT: practical ideas for using the Internet to support learning

and teaching

http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/

Branch out!• Searching the web is not research!• Search Engines

• general (first and second generation)• subject specific • meta • country specific

• Invisible web resources

Search service limitations• Indiscriminate: automatic search engines cannot judge the

quality or provenance of data• The ‘Invisible Web’: millions of Internet resources cannot

be indexed by search engines• Automated descriptions: these do not always convey what

one really wants to know about a site• The result? Lack of precision in search results…

difficulty in identifying relevant, high quality resources

The major playersFirst generationAlta Vistahttp://www.altavista.com/

Second generationGooglehttp://www.google.co.uk/Google Scholarhttp://scholar.google.com/ All the Web http://www.alltheweb.com/Wisenuthttp://www.wisenut.com/

Subject specific search enginesFindLawhttp://www.findlaw.com/Law Crawlerhttp://www.lawcrawler.com/Law.com http://www.law.com/

Medical Matrix http://www.medmatrix.org/Health on the Net http://www.hon.ch/Medical World Search http://www.mwsearch.com/

Scirushttp://www.scirus.comChemie.DEhttp://www.chemie.de/Biolinkshttp://www.biolinks.com/

DailyStocks.com http://www.dailystocks.com/TradingDay.comhttp://tradingday.com/Inomics (Economics) http://www.inomics.com/FMLX http://www.fmlx.com

The invisible web• Direct Search

http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm

• Complete Planethttp://www.completeplanet.com/

To keep up with research on ‘deep web’ searching:See Marcus P. Zillman’s blog ‘Deep Web Research’ onhttp://deepwebresearch.blogspot.com/

Meta-search engines• Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com/ • Clustering tools: sub-group results by topic:

• Vivisimo http://vivisimo.com/ • Clusty http://clusty.com/

• Ixquik http://www.ixquick.com/ • Ithaci http://www.ithaki.net/indexu.htm

Features 1 keyword text-searchingwomen Buddhism

(concepts)women Buddhismwoman Buddhistfemale Buddhafeminist India, Thailand, religion

phrase searching“the role of women in Buddhism”

truncation/word stemmingwom* for woman, women, womb, womanhood, womanize, womankind, womanly, womenfolk, womenkind

variant spellingcolo*r

concept searchingelderly for senior citizen and aged

Features 2natural language queries

what is the weather in London?

boolean AND / OR / AND NOTall of these words (AND) - any of these words (OR) - must not contain (NOT)

grouping words and phraseskayak AND “Fiji Islands”

use of parentheses(college OR university) AND “financial aid”

pollution AND NOT (air OR noise)

pseudo-boolean operators+ or - +anorexia -bulimia

+fairy +tales -grimm, +”city guides” +Oxford

proximity ADJ / NEAR / BEFORE

Features 3• field searching (date, title, url, image, audio, video, links, page

depth). title:“New York Times”

image:butterflies

link:info.ox

domain:uk

host:www.hcu.ox.ac.uk

url:edu• case sensitive:

“Emily Dickson”

Turkey v turkey

Polish v polish

More guidance• Tool kit for the Expert Web Searcherhttp://www.ala.org/ala/lita/litaresources/toolkitforexpert/toolkitexpert.htm

- A regularly updated evaluated list of various types of

search engine

Social or collaborative technologies

• Mailing lists and usenet groups• RSS Feeds• Weblogs or Blogs• WIKIs

Mailing lists• Discussion lists on Jiscmail http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ - mainly for academic communities and most academic

subjects covered. • Usenet news are mainly at http://groups.google.com - millions of topics and it is searchable.

RSS feeds• “Push technology” – an alerting service from web-sites you have

selected• OUCS provides training in using and creating them – see

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxitems/presentations/• Hand-out available with lots of detail on finding RSS feeds at

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxitems/presentations/bytesize1/handout.xml?style=printable

• BBC news - good example http://news.bbc.co.uk/• For a ‘layman’s description’ of how RSS (= Really Simple

Syndication) works see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm

• There are several icons that indicate newsfeed availablity from a web site:

Keeping up• Rather than keep visiting a long list of favourite sites, use

RSS newsfeeds where available• When the site is updated, a link will appear in your RSS

reader or compatible web browser (not Internet Explorer (yet), but Firefox, Mozilla, Opera work) – just click to see the new content

• Some search sites (e.g. SCOPUS) allow you to create an RSS feed based on results of your search, providing easy current awareness

Weblogs or Blogs• A web-site where journal entries are displayed in reverse

chronological order• Can be used as a communication tool (eg during Iraq War)• Weblogs feature – reflective tools, highlighting path of

progression of ideas, strengthening evaluative tools, allowing community building

• Journals can have companion weblogs• Might be useful for student portfolios?• Eg Weblogs in higher education http://www.mchron.net/site/edublog.php

WIKIs• A WIKI is a web-site that allows you, or anyone else, to

add, modify or delete content easily.• Classic example is the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page• An Oxford example is

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/JISC_Digital_Repository_Wiki

Locating places / people• Cutting-edge method! ASK!• Contact – at Oxford

• http://www.ox.ac.uk/contact • Go directly to the institution – Google “I am feeling lucky” or

just type directly your query in the navigation toolbar• World-wide Universities email addresses• JISCMAIL

Search tipsread search engine's help screens use specialised resources first don’t waste time! use mirror sitesbookmarkremember casesword ordercheck your spellinguse synonymsURL’s are case sensitivetruncate URLguess URL

Gullible's Travels• “Our students love the net,

which is OK. The problem is, they also trust it, which is not”.

Block, M. (2004). Library Journal

Best strategy• No searching service is perfect• Be knowledgeable about the types of subject-oriented tools.• Develop skills in using basic syntax, boolean operators etc.• Define what you seek!

state what you want to find in few sentences select keywords, underline the main concepts select synonyms and variant word forms combine synonyms, keywords and variant word forms

• Find resources on the Invisible Web• Be patient or get up early!• Experiment and be flexible!

Conclusion• Maintain a balanced diet!• Five a day…

• Google, Scholar, Intute, subject-specific database, RSS…