Trek 1:
Analysing your topic
Trek 2:
Finding keywords
Trek 3:
Understanding your reading list
Trek 4:
Using the Library Catalogue 1
Trek 5:
Using the Library Catalogue 2
Trek 6:
Finding journal articles
Trek 8:
Evaluating resources
Trek 9:
Referencing
Trek 10:
Using Library services from home
Feedback
Send the InfoTrekk team your comments
You may be very familiar with the World Wide Web (WWW), e-mail and the Internet. Most people have "googled" or "surfed the Net" to find information. If you have, you have probably discovered that there are millions of Web pages to explore. This Trek will help you to search the Web more effectively so that you can find the information you need.
What is a Web browser?
What is a URL?
What is a search engine?
What is a subject directory?
What is a meta search tool?
Hints for searching the Web
A Web browser is software that lets you access the millions of pages that make up the Web. You've probably heard of the Internet Explorer web browser, but there are others, such as Mozilla, Firefox and Opera.
Web browsers allow computers to read web pages containing hypertext which is text with links, graphics, sound and video clips. The system that enables web browsers to communicate is known as the hypertext transfer protocol (http).
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of a web page ('the Web address'). It usually looks something like this:
The first part of the URL specifies the access method, in this case http:// or hypertext transfer protocol.
The second part is the domain name - or the address of the host of the web page.
In the example above it is www.wa.gov.au/:
The last part of the URL is the file name: government.html
the file extension .html indicates it is a hypertext markup language file.
It is always useful to look closely at the URLs to know what type of site your information is coming from. This is one of the things that can help you to evaluate the information you find.
If people "surf the Net", they use search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN Search .
Search engines use automated programs called robots or spiders to travel constantly from site to site checking for new web pages and updating pages and links. Some search engines 'index' the full text of each page, others just index the page's keywords.
When you type a search term or phrase into a search engine, the program checks your term against all the web pages it has indexed. Sometimes you'll get an amazing number of results, and you'll need to narrow your search using the techniques you've learned in Trek 2: Finding keywords.
Subject directories are web databases that use people to index new web pages rather than robots. In subject directories web pages are organised into categories and sub-categories according to their content.
Subject directories don't index nearly as many web pages as search engines, but they are good places to start if you are looking for information on a subject and you won't have to go through a lot of irrelevant hits. Yahoo and INFOMINE are good examples of subject directories.
'Meta search tools' or 'meta search engines' are a little different in that they simultaneously search other search engines and subject directories. Your search needs to be simple, but meta search tools can be a good way to start your searching and find the search engine that indexes your subject better than others. Examples of meta search tools are metacrawler, Ixquick and Profusion.
Now you have more idea of the basic concepts behind the Web, you can try the Quiz! The next Trek is Trek 8: Evaluating resources where you'll discover that not all web pages (or books or journal articles) are of equal quality.
Link to:
