4. Internet,
Breaking Down the Barriers.
Merging Media. Home
Select/Locate
As of January 2, 2001, there are approximately 2,000 million websites, and
over 2,600 search tools. Research has shown that 83% of sites contain commercial
content, and only 6% contain scientific/educational content. No search engine
indexes more than about 16% of the web. Each search engine works slightly
differently from the others.
In order for you to find the best information for your needs, it will help if
you are able to identify the best method for searching, learn how to get the
best possible set of results, and decide if you can "trust" the information that
you receive.
from
http://www.oocities.org/SiliconValley/Mouse/1851/index.html
Problems include finding too much information,
not enough information, time consuming, disappearing information, how to select
what is most useful. Save websites and useful information when you find
them.
A. Safety - Be aware about net safety.
http://www.netalert.net.au/Files/00938_NetAlertPortal.asp?flash=true&loadedFrom=
B. Evaluating resources What is a good
resource? Assess both the quality of information and quality of the web
site.
- Authority, Accuracy, Objectivity, Currency, Coverage,
(Purpose/type of page,
Reliability, Appropriate, right level, primary or secondary source.)
Revision?
http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html
http://www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html
http://www.duke.edu/~de1/evaluate.html
- Who, What When...
http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/Instruction/instmat/webeval.htm
- Activity
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/internet/hoax_research_opinion.cfm
Other similar resources
C. Referencing- if can be found
- Title of work, and fill title of work, Document date, Author, Date accessed, Full URL....see
school diary
- Do not plagiarise. Make sure you record pages carefully to a Word
document as you progress. Be very careful when cutting and pasting that
you also record the source of information.
D. Directories are websites that have been
grouped into categories
for various purposes. often sites organised by humans
Comparison of subject directories and how
to search them
Subject
Directories
E. Search Engines often sites organised by
computer
More info
http://library.albany.edu/internet/ ,
http://library.trinity.wa.edu.au/library/search.htm,
Research
help,
Search help2Other than
Google, a
few of thousands.
- Web Wombat
is
an engine which searches only Australian and New Zealand sites. This can be
very useful if you are interested in specifically local material and don't
want to have to sort through 100s of URLs from all around the world.
-
Alta Vista
is another very useful search engine. particularly as it has an Australian
site, which means searches are very fast. Alta Vista's advanced search
functions are probably the most full featured on the web, allowing you to
create very defined searches.
- Lycos is able to
search for images and sounds, as well as text files, which makes it very
useful if you are looking for multimedia resources.
- WebCrawler has a
very useful feature, the adjacency search. This means you can specify how
close to each other words appear in a document. For example, if you were
interested in finding out about Ballarat in the Goldrush era, you might ask to
find a document in which the words "goldrush" and "Ballarat" appear within 25
words of each other.
- Open Text not
only indexes every word of millions of web pages, it allows you to search news
headlines from on-line newspapers, including The Sydney Morning Herald.
F. Meta Search Engines
Meta-Search
Engines
G. Ask An Expert Use email lists, expert sites
http://www.askanexpert.com//, or newsgroups. What issues arise with
these?
How lists work animation
http://www.learnthenet.com/english/animate/maillist.html
H. Invisible Web Sources
Next-
5. Resources
Image from http://dgl.microsoft.com/
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