Researching On the Internet by Sandi PriceResearching on the Internet is like having a key to the greatest library in the world, when you consider that it's estimated the Internet contains over 320 million pages of information and doubles in size every four months. But to the uninitiated, finding something on the Web seems like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Once you begin to master the techniques of
searching, however, you will be rewarded with an unbelievable amount of information on
every conceivable subject. Your goal is to sort it out and keep your focus. When I began using the Internet over four years ago, I printed out reams and reams of information that took much too long to sort. Most of it became a huge unusable mess and went into the round file under my desk. After a period of trial and error, I began saving the Web pages I needed as text files onto my computer's hard drive, edited out what I didn't need and ended up with maybe a paragraph or two out of a dozen pages. This made the plethora of information much easier to handle. But you might want to add the URL or Web site address to the top of your text page, just in case you need to find it again. In the event you do want to print out Web site pages, you need to be aware that only Netscape adds the URL to your printed page, while most versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer leave you wondering where that page came from. There are many ways to search the Net. Let's start with search engines, the way most users tackle the job. What is a search engine? Simply another piece of software used to search a fixed database on the Internet. And while all search engines perform essentially the same task, they accomplish it in different ways with vastly different results. Bear in mind, no one search engine will index the entire Internet. The most popular search engines include: Alta Vista http: //altavista. digital. com There are also multi-threaded search engines, often called "meta” search tools that allow you to search multiple databases and/or search engines simultaneously. Examples include: Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com
Galaxy http://www.einet.net Then there are specialized subject guides that attempt to provide you with simultaneous access to collections of subject guides. Often, experts maintain individual subject guides ij their own fields. Examples of these include: The Mining Company http://www.miningco.com Now for a brief lesson on how to search. To create accurate search queries, you need to know about Boolean logic. It’s a concept that uses “operators” —words such as NOT, AND or OR. For instance, you may be searching for all the documents that contain information on cowboys. Plug the word cowboys in a search engine, and you’ll get back a ton of information on Dallas Cowboys. But plug in cowboys NOT Dallas, and all references to the Dallas variety will be missing. On the other hand, when you want to find Dallas Cowboys, one way to do so is to use cowboys AND Dallas. When you want to search for terms with several names or variant spellings, like email and e-mail, you can use the OR operator. Using email OR e-mail will bring up anything that matches either of these terms. You can also use an asterisk as a wildcard option or a question mark. These symbols can be used to stand for any string of characters. Wild* could return search hits about wildcards, wilder, wilderness . . . well, you get the idea. Finding phrases is fairly simple. Just enclose the string of words in quotes and it will bring up exact returns. "Emergency room doctor" will return only pages that contain those words in that order. Boolean queries can also be combined with phrases, as in: "go to the beach AND California. Pages must contain both the phrase and the word California, which could be located somewhere else on the page. When you choose search words, be as specific as possible. A word too general or common may return with two or three million sites. On the other hand, your search may be a very narrow one and not return any sites. Then, you will have to widen your search. Consider checking an encyclopedia or thesaurus for ideas on what words to use. Is there a best time to do Net research? Yes, the earlier the better, and 5 a.m. is great. If you can crawl in front of your computer when everyone else in the country is still snoring, you will find the Internet is much faster. By 8 or 9 a.m., the business world will be joining you. By late afternoon, the kids are home from school, and the Net slows to a crawl for the rest of the day and night. Be forewarned, there are pitfalls. Two in particular: getting distracted and getting lost. One minute you're on track, piling up information about new products that might be worth developing, and the next your eyes are caught by a banner advertising a monster sale on scanners. Without a second thought, you eagerly follow that link and another and another. Before you know it, you’ve perused a dozen sites that have nothing to do with what you were supposed to be doing in the first place. To top it off, you were right in the middle of collecting information, and you haven’t the foggiest how to get back to where you began. Lesson 1: Before you follow a link from a page you need, either bookmark the page in your favorites or write down the URL before you take that detour. Lesson 2: If you have all the time in the world, feel free to surf the Net to your heart's content. But if, like the rest of us, you have a deadline, forget the detours and stay on track until you finish your original research. Of course, that doesn't mean you can’t leave cookie crumbs or bookmark that interesting detour to go back to later, does it?
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