xp new perspectives on the internet, 4e tutorial 5 1 information resources on the web finding,...

New Perspectives on the Internet, 4eTutorial 5

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XP

Information Resources on the Web

Finding, Evaluating, and Using

Web Information Resources


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XPObjectives

• Find current news and weather information on the Web.

• Obtain maps and city guides.

• Use online library resources.

• Find and use other Internet research resources.


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XPObjectives

• Evaluate the validity and quality of Internet research resources.

• Find graphics, sounds, and video resources.

• Learn how copyrights affect your use of resources you find on the Web.


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XPCurrent Information

• To help you find current news and information, many search engines and directories include sections devoted to news items.

• Some, like Excite, let you personalize links to specify the kind of information that appears on the page when you log in. You usually have to register with the site in order to do this.


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links to stockmarket reports

links to currentnews stories

links to personalization and customization features


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links to news andcurrent information

links to currentnews stories


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• Search engines can be useful tools for finding current news stories and many will allow you to choose a date range when you enter a search expression.

• HotBot’s AdvancedSearch pageprovides twoways to do this.

date filter with presetrange options

before/after date filter


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XPAltaVista Advanced Search Page

• The AltaVista search engine allows you to set an exact “between” date range on its advanced Search page.

exact “between”date filter


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XPFinding Web Sites that HaveBeen Modified Recently

• Go to the Web site for a search engine or directory that allows date-range restrictions.

• Formulate your search expression.

• Set the date-range restriction in the search tool.

• Run the search.

• Evaluate the search results. If you do not find useful results, select an alternative search tool, and then run the search again.


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XPFinding Web Sites that HaveBeen Modified Recently

search results

date filter setting

search expression


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XPGetting the News

• Most search engines and Web directories include links to broadcast networks, wire services, and newspapers.

• A wire service is an organization that gathers and distributes news to newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, and other organizations that pay a fee to the wire service.

• All of the major U.S. broadcasters have Web sites that carry news features. Broadcasters in other countries also provide news reports on their Web pages.


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XPGetting the News

• Major newspapers have Web sites that include current news and many other features from their print editions.

• Many broadcast news, wire services, and newspaper Web sites include search features that allow you to search the site for specific news stories.

• The Internet Public Library – Online Newspapers site includes hyperlinks to hundreds of international and domestic newspapers.


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XPInternet Public Library

links to non-U.S.newspapers, listed alphabetically bycountry

links to U.S.newspapers, listedalphabetically by state

type searchexpression here


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XPGetting the News

• Web news directories offer links to the Web sites of newspapers and other media outlets.

• News search engines let you search the content of current news stories in multiple publications and wire services.

• Weblogs (blogs) are Web sites that contain commentary on current events written by individuals.

• Companies such as Northern Light and Moreover offer news search engines to promote their subscription-based custom news services.


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XPWeather Reports

• A number of Web sites offer weather information and forecasts.

• Finding a weather forecast: Open a weather information Web site in a Web browser. Locate the weather report for the city or area in which you

are interested. Repeat the steps to find other weather information in

different weather information Web sites.


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XPWeather Reports

type city name or zip code here to obtain another weather forecast

current weather

Doppler radar image

link to printable ten-day forecast

ten-day local forecast

The Weather Channel local forecast page for Nashville


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XPObtaining Maps andDestination Information

• A number of Web sites provide maps and driving directions.

• Although the information provided by these sites is not perfect (new roads and detours caused by current construction work are not included), many people find them to be helpful travel aids.

• One of the most popular of these sites is MapQuest.


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XPObtaining Maps andDestination Information

type addressinformation here


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XPFinding a Local AreaMap on the Web

• Open a Web site that offers maps in your Web browser.

• Enter the location of the map you need to find.

• Zoom the map scale in or out to suit your requirements.

• Print or download the finished map.


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XPFinding a Local AreaMap on the Web

click here tore-center map

map zoom controls

RymanAuditoriumarea map inYahoo! Maps


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XPObtaining TravelDestination Information

• Go to a city guide Web site in your Web browser.

• Search the site for your destination city, region, or country.

• Explore the hyperlinks provided by the site for your destination.

• You can find a variety of useful information using city guide sites including information about entertainment, restaurants and specific attractions.


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XPCitysearch

user ratings and links to editorial review

key factsabout thedestination

schedule ofupcomingevents

The RymanAuditorium Page


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XPFinding Businesses

• Some Web sites include listings of businesses and people, much like print directories that you have probably used to find telephone numbers.

• These sites often include search engines that specialize in finding information about people and businesses on the Web.

• The sites that store information about businesses only are often called yellow pages directories.


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XPFinding Business Listingson the Web

• Navigate to a yellow pages directory in your Web browser.

• Enter information about the nature and geographic location of the business that you want to find.

• Run the search.

• Examine and evaluate the results to determine whether you should revise your search or try another search engine.


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XPFinding People andRelated Privacy Concerns

• Many Web sites let you search for individuals’ names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

• White pages directories collect information from published telephone directories and other publicly available information and index it by last name.

• Some Web sites make unpublished and unlisted telephone numbers available for public use.

• Response to concerns about privacy violations has led to most white pages sites offering people a way to remove their listings.


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XPSearching for YourWhite Pages Listing

• Open a white pages directory Web site in your Web browser.

• Enter your name and part of your address.

• Run the search, and then examine the search results.

• Consider repeating the search with various combinations of partial address information or variants of the correct spelling of your name.


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XPEvaluating the Validity and Qualityof Web Research Resources

• One of the most important issues in doing Web research is assessing the validity and quality of the information provided on the Internet.

• Virtually anybody can create a Web page on almost any subject.

• Information on the Web is seldom subjected to the review and editing processes that have become a standard practice in print publishing.


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• Reduce your risks by carefully evaluating the quality of any Web resource on which you plan to rely for information related to an important judgment or decision.

• Evaluate three major components of any Web page: Authorship Content Appearance


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XPAuthor Identity and Objectivity

• Determine who authored the page.

• Sufficient background information and credentials should be available to establish the author’s professional qualifications.

• Check secondary sources for corroborating information.

• Author contact information, such as street, e-mail address, or telephone number, should be provided.


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XPAuthor Identity and Objectivity

• You can make a rough assessment of who owns a specific Web site by examining the domain identifier in the URL.

• Consider whether the qualifications presented by the author pertain to the material that appears on the Web site.

• Look for other examples of the author’s work on the Web if you cannot determine the specific areas of the author’s educational background.

• Details about the author’s affiliations—either as an employee, owner, or consultant—with organizations that might have an interest in the research results or other information included in the Web site should be available on the Web site.


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XPContent

• Look for a clearly stated publication date to determine the timeliness of the content.

• Read the content critically and evaluate whether the included topics are relevant to the research question at hand.

• Try to determine whether important topics or considerations were omitted.

• Assess the depth of treatment the author gives to the subject.


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XPForm and Appearance

• Many pages that contain low-quality or incorrect information are poorly designed and not well edited.

• A page that contains spelling errors indicates a low-quality resource.

• Loud colors, graphics that serve no purpose, and flashing text are all Web page design elements that often suggest a low-quality resource.


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hyperlinks to more information about PSR

contact information for PSR main offices


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XPLibrary Resources

• The Web has made existing libraries more accessible to more people.

• Library users should see many new and interesting research resources as traditional libraries and online collections of works that have serious research value begin to recognize each other as complementary.

• The LibrarySpot Web site is a collection of hyperlinks organized in the same general way that a physical library might arrange its collections.


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XPLibrarySpot Home Page

links to lists anddirectories of libraries

links to commonly used reference materials

links to electronic text collections


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XPLibrary Resources

• The U.S. Library of Congress Web site includes links to a huge array of research resources, ranging from the Thomas legislative information site to the Library of Congress archives.


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XPText and Other Archiveson the Web

• The Web contains a number of text resources, including dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, glossaries, and other reference works.

• A computer interface allows you to enter a search term and saves you the trouble of scanning several pages of text to find the correct entry.

• Many of the best resources offered on the Web require you to pay a subscription fee.


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XPText and Other Archiveson the Web

• Free reference works on the Web are good enough to provide acceptable service for many users and are worth investigating.

• The Web includes grammar checkers, thesauri, rhyming dictionaries, and language-translation pages.

• The Web also offers a number of full text copies of works that are no longer protected by copyright.

• Two of the most well-known Web sites for full text storage are the Project Gutenberg and Project Bartleby Web sites.


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XPCiting Web Research Resources

• The APA and MLA formats for Web page citations are similar to those of print citations. They include: Name of the author or Web page creator (if known)

Title of the Web site in italics

Name of the site’s sponsoring organization (if any)

Date the page was retrieved

URL enclosed in chevron symbols (< >)


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• Citation formats for electronic resources are still emerging so you should check for updates to these styles before using them.

• Always check to see if your instructor or editor has established guidelines that are different from these.


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Web page with a title and an author:

Hinman, L.M. Ethics Updates. University of San Diego. Retrieved 12 Feb. 2003 <http://ethics.sandiego.edu>.

Web page with a title, but no author:Java News. Sun Microsystems, Inc. Retrieved 15 Feb. 2003

<http://www.sun.com/javanews>.

Web page with a title and no author:United States Postal Service home page. Retrieved 18 March

2003 <http://www.usps.com>.


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• Formats for citations to books, journal articles, and other research resources that are accessible on the Web are more complex than the formats for Web pages.

• There is no clear standard specifying where or how to break long URLs at the end of a print line.

• Both the APA and the MLA recommend that the URL be enclosed with chevron symbols (< >); however, this is not universally accepted.

• Any method of citing Web pages faces one serious, yet unsolved problem—moving and disappearing URLs.


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XPCopyright Violation and Plagiarism

• When you use your Web browser to see a graphic image, listen to a sound, or view a video clip, your Web browser downloads the multimedia element from the Web server and stores it in a temporary file on your computer’s hard drive.

• A new, intermediate level of ownership that did not exist before the emergence of the Web is created during this process.

• Because computer files are even easier to copy than a picture in a book, the potential for Web copyright violations is much greater.


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• Some sites provide graphics files that are in the public domain, which means that you are free to copy the files without requesting permission from the source.

• You should check the site carefully for requirements about if and how you acknowledge the source of the material when it is used.

• Failure to cite the source of material that you use (even though it is in the public domain and not protected by copyright) is called plagiarism and can be a serious violation of your school’s academic honesty policy.


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• Free files often carry a restriction against selling or redistributing them, even though you may be able to use them without cost on your own personal Web page.

• You must carefully examine any site form which you download multimedia files to determine what usage limitations apply.

• If you cannot find a clear statement of copyright terms or a statement that the files are in the public domain, you should not use them on your Web page or anywhere else.


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XPImages and Graphics on the Web

• Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is an older format for images that does a very good job of compressing small- or medium-sized files.

• Most GIF files you find on the Web have a .gif extension and can store only up to 256 different colors.

• The GIF format is widely used on the Internet for images that have only a few distinct colors, such as line drawings, cartoons, simple icons, and screen objects.

• An animated GIF file combines several images into a single GIF file and gives the appearance of cartoon-like animation.


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• Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a newer file format that stores more than 16 million colors than the GIF format.

• The JPEG format is particularly useful for photographs and continuous-tone art (images that do not have sharp edges).

• Most JPEG files that you find on the Web have a .jpg file extension.


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• GIF and JPEG formats offer file compression, which is important on the Web.

• Uncompressed graphics files containing images of significant size or complexity are too large to transmit efficiently.

• JPEG file compression is lossy.

• A lossy compression procedure erases some elements of the graphic. The greater the level of compression, the more graphic detail is lost.


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• Other file graphic image file formats on the Web include: Windows bitmap file format (.bmp) Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) (.tif) PC Paintbrush format (.pcx) Portable Network Graphics (or PNG) format (.png)

• Windows bitmap, TIFF, and PC Paintbrush formats are all uncompressed graphics formats and Web page designers usually avoid them because they take too long to download.


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• One of the best Web resources for the fine arts is the WebMuseum site, which occasionally features special exhibitions.

• Many search engine and Web directory sites have improved their image classification databases.

• One Web site that can help you find clipart images is the Clip Art Searcher. It includes customized search controls for several search engines and directories.


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XPSounds, Music, and Video Clips

• Many Web site designers include sound or video clips to enhance the information on their pages.

• Sound and video files often require that you add software extensions to your Web browser.

• Software extensions, or plug-ins, are usually available as free downloads.

• Firms that offer media players as free downloads earn their profits by selling encoding software to developers who want to include audio and video files in that format on their Web sites.


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• A computer must be equipped with a sound card and either a speaker or earphones to play an audio file.

• The Wave (WAV) format digitizes audio waveform information at a user-specified sampling rate and can be played on any Windows computer that supports sound.

• The size of WAV files limits their use on the Web to situations that require only short, lower-quality audio information.


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• The MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) format is a standard adopted by the music industry for controlling devices that create and read musical information.

• The MIDI format digitally records information about each element of the sound, including its pitch, length, and volume.

• It is easier to edit music recorded in the MIDI format because you can manipulate the individual characteristics of the sound with precision.

• MIDI files are much smaller than WAV files and are often used on the Web. They usually have a .midi or .mid file extension.


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• The UNIX operating system’s audio file format is known as the AU format because its file extension is normally .au.

• AU files are approximately the same size as WAV files that store the same information.


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• Streaming transmission is a popular technique for transferring both sound and video files.

• The Web server sends the first part of the file to the Web browser, which begins playing the file. While the browser is playing the file, the server is sending the next segment of the file.

• Streaming transmission allows you to access very large audio or video files in much less time than the download-then-play procedure requires.


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• RealNetworks, Inc., developed the RealAudio format for audio files and the RealVideo format for video files.

• You must download and install one of the real file players from the firm’s Web site to play these files.

• The file extension for this format is .ra or .ram.

• RealNetworks formats are compressed to further increase the efficiency with which they can be transferred over the Internet.


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• Older video file formats are also available on the Web, including AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) format and QuickTime format.

• The International Standards Organization’s Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has created a series of standards for compressed file formats.

• Files in the MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3) format are somewhat lower in quality than WAV format files, but they are 90 percent smaller.


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XPFuture of Electronic Publishing

• Information can now be disseminated more rapidly than ever and in large quantities, but with a low required investment.

• The subscription market required for a Web publication to be successful can be very small or even nonexistent.

• E-zines, Web-based magazines, are appearing on the Web in increasing numbers.

• E-zines can focus on very specialized, narrow interests and have become popular places for publishing new fiction and poetry.


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XPSummary

• Current news stories, weather information, maps, and information about travel destinations can be found on the Web by using specialized search engines and Web directories.

• Online library resources and other research and reference resources are available on the Web.

• There are techniques that you can use to assess the validity and quality of Web information resources.


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XPSummary

• There are several image, sound, and video file formats common on the Web.

• Copyrights can restrict your use of multimedia files on the Web.

xp new perspectives on the internet, 4e tutorial 5 1 information resources on the web finding,...

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