1. Searching the Web for academic information Ruth Stubbings

2. Aim of today’s sessions  what is the web  search strategies  search tools  time savers  choosing what websites to use

3. The web and browsers The Internet…. is the global computer network, ….whilst the World Wide Web provides the system for accessing the information on this network. The Browser The program used to access the Internet is known as a browser, e.g. Internet Explorer or FireFox

4. What’s Out There?  individually list what sort of information can be found on the web  be prepared to give feedback to rest of class

5. How do you search the web? in groups discuss:  how you currently search and use information from the web  be prepared to give feedback to whole of class

6. Different ways to search the Internet  Search engines  general  computer indexed  lots of hits  quality unknown  Metasearch engines  more than 1 search engine at a time  basic queries  Subject gateways  high quality  indexed by people  smaller number of hits

7. MetaLib – Internet search services

8. Search strategies  use subject gateways and search engines  develop search strategies?  Why?  nearly 550 billion documents on 200,000 web sites in the "deep" web  May 2004 Google gives the size of their index (i.e. visible web content) with more than 4,2 billion web pages

9. Search strategy  use keywords  specific or unique  more than one  "phrase searching”  use advanced search features

10.  search facilities  basic, advanced  different search services  images, map, news, video, local, scholar  tools  currency conversion, definitions, world clock

11. Google basic search features  automatically AND then OR keywords  phrase searching - use “speech marks”  e.g. “glass ceiling”  exact word – place plus in front  e.g. +marathon  can exclude words using –  e.g. bass -guitar

12. Google basic search “manchester football club” - village

13. Google basic search - numbers DVD player £50..150

14. Google advanced search  specify words  language  format  date  where in page  domain  similar pages

15. Google Scholar  Google Scholar covers peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research

16. Google Scholar  Search diverse sources from one convenient place  Find papers, abstracts and citations  Locate the complete paper through your library or on the web  Learn about key papers in any area of research bumblebee

18. Google Scholar & SFX

19. Google tools - calculation 40 + 20 - subtraction 45 – 39 * multiplication 45 * 39 / division 45 / 39 % of percentage of 45% of 39 ^ raise to a power 2^5

20. Google tools – currency conversion 10 gbp in usd

21. Subject gateways - Intute  Intute: Arts and Humanities  Intute: Health & Life Sciences  Intute: Science, Engineering, & Technology  Intute: Social Sciences bumblebee

22. Time saving …  RSS feeds - Really Simple Syndication [RSS]  eg: The BBC uses RSS to create and distribute news  Alerts –  eg: Google Alerts - email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your choice of query or topic

23. How do choose what websites to use? in groups discuss:  the criteria you use to chose a website  be prepared to give feedback to whole of class

24. The invisible web  there's a lot more to the Web than what you can find with search engines, and that's the Invisible Web.  these resources, often hidden from search engine users behind web scripts, are known as the "deep web."  use subject databases to discover contents

25. Things to remember  MetaLib:  lists search engines, directories, gateways under the category Internet  do not forget subject specific databases  the Tonic course (registration needed) http://www.netskills.ac.uk/  supporting material on Learn http://learn-pilot.lboro.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3610

26. Summary  there are a number of different tools available for searching the web  the tool you choose to use will depend on your information needs  you may need to use more than one tool to find the information you need  select carefully the information you use

27.  Now you can try a search…

28. What’s Out There?  individuals’ home pages  company websites  government information  charity / organisation websites  course material  bibliographic databases  discussion groups and mailing lists  audio, video, images  interactive resources  free and subscription services

29. Evaluating websites  navigation / design  advertising  inflammatory/provocative  entertainment  accuracy  peer-reviewed  good links  copyright  scope / coverage  author  domain  company / institution  currency  checking against other sources  relevance  depth  bias / objectivity