Using Search Engines

This material has been developed to accompany:

"Searching and Researching on the Internet and the World Wide Web, Fourth Edition" ISBN 1-59028-036-9
"The Information Searcher's Guide to Searching and Researching on the Internet & the World Wide Web" ISBN 1-887902-58-9

Using Search Engines

Activities

HotBot	AltaVista
Excite

Activity Search Strategies in HotBot

Overview
In the first activity, we will look for recent information (that is, within the last six months) on the Shining Path, a revolutionary group in Peru. Before we get online, we will follow Steps 1 through 5 of the basic search strategy as we formulate the main ideas of our search.

Steps 1 and 2: The important concepts and keywords are Shining Path and Peru.
Step 3: Since the Shining Path is a revolutionary group in Peru, we'll want to include the phrase in Spanish, the primary language spoken in Peru. Shining Path in Spanish is Sendero Luminoso.
Step 4: Since we don't want pages that have information about Tupac Amaru, another revolutionary group in Peru, we'll need to use the Boolean NOT operator. We'll also need to search with the phrases Shining Path AND Sendero Luminoso, if possible.
Step 5: We'll choose HotBot a full-text database that is good for very specific searches because it supports full Boolean searching and has the capability to limit searches by date.

Now we're ready to go online and search HotBot. We'll follow these steps, which closely correspond to Steps 6 through 9 of the basic search strategy:

Go to the home page for HotBot.
Read the search instructions on HotBot's home page (Step 6).
Create a search expression using syntax appropriate for HotBot (Step 7).
Evaluate the results (Step 8).
Using the Find function, search a Web page for the keywords Shining Path or Sendero Luminoso (Step 8).
Modify the search by limiting it to educational sites only, and view the results (Step 9).

(See the book for the details.)

Activity Search Strategies in AltaVista´s Simple Search Mode

Overview
Since we already followed Steps 1 through 4 of the basic search strategy in Activity 1 by determining the keywords and search features (phrases, synonyms, Boolean logic, and so forth), and since we chose the search engine (Step 5), we can proceed to Steps 6 through 9. We will take the following steps in this activity:

Go to the home page for AltaVista.
Read the instructions for AltaVista´s simple search mode (Step 6).
Create a search expression using syntax appropriate for AltaVista´s simple search mode (Step 7).
View the results (Step 8).
Modify the search by limiting it to Web pages with csrp.org in the host name portion of the URLs, and then view the results(Step 9).

(See the book for the details.)

Activity Finding Specific Information in Excite

Overview
We´re going to search Excite Excite´s search engine covers the entire Web. Excite is large and powerful and is mostly full-text, in that it ignores certain words, such as articles and prepositions. Excite supports concept searching; that is, the search engine automatically searches for synonyms of the words you enter. For example, if you asked for teenager, it might return results with the word adolescent as well.

In this activity, we are going to do a couple of different searches, one on a person's name and the other on a line of poetry. First, we´ll search Excite's database for information, and hopefully for a bibliography, of the works of the writer Saki.

Before going online, we have done our homework and have learned that Saki is also known as H.H. Munro, Hector Munro, or Hector H. Munro. After we do that search, we´ll look for the poem with the line "Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

We'll follow these steps:

Go to the home page for Excite
Read the search tips.
Formulate and enter the search expression.
View the results and access a Web page.
Search for the line of poetry "Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
View the results and access The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

(See the book for details)

Activities

HotBot	AltaVista
Excite

Visit Searching and Researching on the Internet and the WWW for more information about using the Internet for doing research and finding what you need.

This material has been developed to accompany: