B211 Lab Week 2

Laboratory Week 2 - Effective Web Searching

Learning Objectives:

Learn some effective ways of researching material on the web.

Start the habit of keeping up-to-date with current developments.

Software required:

The following exercises only requires a web browser.

Instructions:

Search Engines

One of the key ways of finding out about online material on a subject area is to start looking using search engines. We will cover search engines in a lot more detail in topic 2 (including the ranking methods by different engines, how they find pages, advance query methods, etc). You may choose to read ahead to material on that topic if you have time, or I would recommend you learn and assimilate the information below, then enhance your skills when we cover search engines in week 3 and 4.

There are different categories of "search engines". Below are the categories, as well as a few popular examples of each. You may know of many other ones.

Search Engines - obtains information on web-sites and pages by having programs (called robots or spiders) automatically scan the web by following links. Some popular examples:

Google (http://www.google.com)
AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com or http://www.altavista.com.au)
Excite (http://www.excite.com)
InfoSeek (http://www.infoseek.com)

Subject Directories - entries in their listings are done by manual entry into their databases. The entries are arranged in hierarchies of subject areas. Some popular examples:

Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com)
LookSmart (http://www.looksmart.com)

Meta Search Engines - search a few other search engines and returns the results of each. Some popular examples:

Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com)
Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com)

Search strategies

Here are some guidelines on using the different types of search engines. We will add to the strategies in the week 4 lectures, once you have a better understanding of the components of the World Wide Web.

If you already know of an official/authoritative site for the topic you are researching, then go to the site and use their search facility. Or follow the links from these official sites. The official sites usually (but not always) have a much better arrangement of information than search engines do. In all of your strategies, your first priority should be to reach official sites.

If haven't got a clue where to start, get a general idea by using meta search engines. Use keywords which are as unique as possible, but still very relevant to your topic. If all search engines have a very high ranking of one or a few sites, those might be official sites, and you can go back to (1). If not, look at the summaries and follow the most promising links first.

If the topic is a subject area rather than a particular unique name, then look through some subject directories to see what is listed. Most subject directories also lists subject directories for specific topics (eg. go to Yahoo and search for "web directories").

To expand your searches to get more information, use general search engines. Start with the ones which turned up what seems to be the best results in (2) - this is not always reliable, but it could be that that particular search engine happens to have gone through most of the sites on your topic (which is why it turned up good results in the first place).

Keeping track of information

Always follow the links which are the most promising first. Record the other "interesting" but less relevant links, and return later if you have time. Recording can be as simple as bookmarking it using your web browser, or cutting-and-pasting into a text file, or even (heavens forbid) writting it down with pen and paper.

Make very brief notes on useful contents of the pages. In most case you will visit so many sites you won't remember the contents of them all.

Keep track of where you went, either by writing the addresses down, printing the pages, or book-marking them. If your browser supports a history of pages you have visited (menu item Communicator>Tools>History in Netscape Navigator 4.7, and the History icon in Microsoft Internet Explorer), you can at least track where you have been. It still doesn't solve the problem of not remembering what the contents of the pages, but at least you can get back the URL.

Evaluating the usefulness of information on web pages

When evaluating the usefulness of a web-site or a page, consider the following:

Are the authors acknowledged authorities on the topic? You may get an idea of the authoritative people after looking through a significant number of pages on the topic.

How recent are the documents? One of the biggest problems with web information is that out-of-date information can remains online forever. Look for when it was created, when the last revision was, are the pages regularly maintained.

Are the documents authentic? Does it look like the document was originally written by an expert, but modified by someone else without acknowledgements. This can happen in loose mirror sites.

Here are a few links to references which list a much more comprehensive set of criteria for evaluating Internet information. You may choose to read them in full. Do so only if you have time! You can spend days going through all the references.

Bibliography on How to Evaluating Internet Resources - a mountain of resources!

Some common pitfalls

Following links which look attractive, or have gimmicks. This is the easiest way to get lost in the surf. It is very easy to spend hours clicking on links, and then realising you can't remember where you have been, and what were in the pages.

Not knowing the aim of your research. If time is at a premium, make sure you have an objective when following links:

Let your objective be the guide to your web surfing. Always be clear what you are looking for.

For all sites you go to, quickly scan to determine it's usefulness for your objectives. Look for brief statements indicating what's on the page, or links which says "About ...", or "Introducing...".

Current Developments
If what you are searching for is on latest development on a particular matter, then search engines may not be the best place to start, since current news articles may not yet be indexed by the search engines. In those cases, your best sources are online news sites (eg. CNN, Fox News, etc) and online versions of newspapers and periodicals (eg. The West Australian, The Australian, The Economist, USA Today, etc). For IT related events, there is also a wealth of online-only news sites to consult (see reading materials page).

For a comprehensive list of news sites, try the following:

News and Newspaper links at the Walter Clinton Jackson Library at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

NewsDirectory.com

Another good source of information about current developments in a particular field is the official site for that field.

Contacting people online

In most areas, there will be people who are quite happy to assist anyone with problems in certain areas. Their contact information are usually found on their web pages. This is usually a better source of information, since you can ask specific questions directly.

This point is mainly for your future reference. You are not to seek assistance online outside of this university to complete your assessable research in this unit. I especially do not want to get complaints from anyone online that 300 Murdoch University students have just contacted him/her to seek help on a certain topic.

Exercises:

Test your research skills by looking for information on the following topics:

Current Australian government programmes on Information Technology.

Official PHP language releases

Consult your tutor about whether you have found the right sources. More importantly, think about whether the approach you used to find the sources will work for other topics, or was it pure luck that you found the correct sources.
Don't be too concerned with the actual content you find. Think more about how you approach it (where to look, can you find official/authoritative sites, what search engines to use, what search term to use, etc). The key objective here is not that you have information on any particular topic, but that you have the skills to gather information on any topic.

Start researching some areas you believe might be useful for assignment 1. Think about what you may have to look for, and consult your tutor on your approach.

Read the week's development on the Internet by scanning through relevant articles in the IT section of Tuesday's the Australian newspaper - use the online version or the physical copy in the University library. Start getting into the habit of keeping up with current developments. Test your knowledge of major developments by going through the Good News Week self-tests.

H.L. Hiew
Unit Coordinator