Lesson 3
Introduction to search engines:
If you go to a library to find a book on a particular subject, you might find a handy card catalog or index that tells you what books the library owns and where you might find the books on the topic you are interested in. Often, the books are grouped by subject matter so that one shelf has all the books on astronomy or medicine. And at every library, there is always a librarian in every library that knows where every single book and subject is stored and can walk you right to the shelf.
Not so with the Internet. No one person or organization controls the Internet. Anybody can hook up a computer to the Net and put whatever they want on it. Nobody is in charge of making sure that information is accurate, meaningful or even desirable. There is no card catalog to the Internet and abslutely nobody has any idea of what is on it at any given time.
And there are no standards for how information is organized. The people who build Web sites are usually not professional information specialists. They don't necessarily organize the information in a manner that might be intuitively obvious to you. One Web designer might organize reports from her agency alphabetically. Another might organize them chronologically. A third might put reports under the Web page of each of the departments. Other Web sites have no apparent rhyme of reason for why information is stored the way it is. The Web is, in short, chaotic.
The Internet is also like an organic being. It changes by the millisecond. Information that was there yesterday is gone today. A particularly useful Web site might be down because the power is off in the building where the server is stored. News websites change daily. The Internet is a perpetual motion machine that always changes.
So how do we find infomation in this chaos?
Fortunately some smart people have figured out some tools to help us find information. However, using these tools are more of an art than a science. Let me repeat that: using these tools are more an art than a science.
Why is that important to keep in mind? Because even the most experienced Web searcher may not find what they're looking for. You have to be patient. And you need to be a little lucky sometimes. However, luck is often the residue of design. If you know all the tools and how to use them and if you use a disciplined approach to finding the information, you will have more luck than someone who does not.
Think of it as a probability experiment. You can find what you are looking for (if it actually exists on the Web) 95% of the time if you have good search habits and 20% of the time if you are sloppy and do not use the tools to their full extent.
So what are the tools?
There are five excellent ways to find information. They are:
- Knowing already where the information will be stored.
- Guessing correctly where the information is stored (don't laugh)
- Catalog search engines (see lesson 4)
- Key word search engines (see lesson 5)
- Specialty search engines
Using these tools correctly and using a disciplined approach to finding information, you can tackle some of the nets toughest problems.
1. Knowing already where the information will be stored:
Many reporters work beats, such as covering education, science or government. As a reporters gets to know his or her beat, they learn where information is stored. Same with the Web. When I covered Nashville city government, I knew every piece of information stored on the city's Web site. Because of that, when I needed a piece of information, I could go to that site and find it instantly. There were many other Web sites I monitored regularly including sites for local businesses, agencies and where residents chatted. I stored these sites in my favorites or bookmarks files and referred to them regularly.
As you too spend more time on the Internet, you will learn where the regular sources of information are. Remember, a Web site simply represents a person, organization or business. Treat them as such.
2. Guessing
Guessing where a Web site is saves a lot of time looking for the information. Remember, people usually want to be found on the Web. That's why they often fight to get the Web address they really want.
Most domains have the format www.domainname.extension
The domain name is usually something easy to remember and the extension uses the standard described before:
.com commercial site .edu educational site .org non-profit site .net Internet service provider .gov governmental site .nato NATO site .mil US military site .int International site
.ba Bosnia-Herzegovina .yu Yugoslavia .us United States .mk Macedonia .de Germany .fr France .nl Netherlands .hu Hungary Thus we make some quick guess where sites can be found. For instance, the American computer company IBM is a commercial company and therefore it's Website is likely to be www.ibm.com and in fact, it is.
Try guessing the where the following sites might be found. To get the correct answer, put the mouse over the name below. The correct Web site will show up in the bottom left hand corner of your browser. Be aware that many companies often have more than one Web address or site.
Harvard University (U.S.A) The Sorbonne (Universite of Paris) The United Nations Coca Cola Company BMW Auto company (Germany) Air Bosna NTV Hayat Dino Merlin's Homepage If you don't know where the information is and you can't guess, try a catalog search engine which you will find in the next lesson.
All material Copyright © 2000 Drew
Sullivan unless otherwise indicated.
All Rights Reserved