Using the Net

Let the Browser Beware

There are literally millions of websites making up the internet.  When using the internet as a research tool, something you need to keep in mind is that anyone can publish a website on the internet for very little money (or sometimes for free). As a result, some of the sites that you will run across in the course of your research will be well-designed, thought out, and full of balanced information and facts; but for each of those, there are hundreds that are complete garbage. 

The challenge for us is to be able to find a site, and determine which category it falls into before we decide to use its information.  This site contains some useful ideas about how to judge the value of the information a page presents.

Get Searching

Search Engines: This site contains a table which you might use to point you in the direction of a search engine based on the type of information you are looking for.  A few of the search engines are also linked below.

• Google - a good all-purpose place to start.
  Ask Jeeves - type in the question, and cross your fingers.
  Dogpile - a meta-engine, that gives the results of several search engines.
  Clusty - organizes your results by categories which are shown on the left side.
  Grokker - orgnaizes the results in visual groups.
• Using a Search Engine: Most of the search engines on the internet use the same basic method, so it’s important to have an idea of what words to enter in the search field.  Here are a few tips:
  • Searching for a single word is likely to result in way too many pages for you to look through them all, so enter multiple words.
    • Here is an example of a search that was way too general. There are far too many results (over 63,000,000) too look through to try to find useful information.
    • Here is a search with more terms.  While there are still quite a few results, we have a better chance of not having to filter through a bunch of sites that have nothing to do with what we’re looking for.
  • Be as specific as you can to narrow the results.
  • Often, the advanced search option in an engine will let you choose words that you do NOT want included, or you can use + and -.
    • Here we told the engine that we only wanted to see pages that include ALL of the words, not just ANY.  Putting a - in front of one of the terms would have told the engine that we did NOT want to see any pages that included that word.
  • Include alternate spellings in your search.
    • Here we have included two of the more common spellings of the terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden. Note that because there is no + or -, the engine is returning any pages that use either spelling.
  • Put quotation marks around a phrase that you want to search for. Otherwise, the search results will include all pages that have ANY of the words you have included.
    • Notice the difference in the number of pages returned between these two searches.  First, without the quotation marks, and now with them.
  • Many engines will let you refine a search you have already done, or search within the original results. This can be a way of further narrowing the results down to a number that is more manageable.
  • Most engines prioritize the results, putting the pages that include the largest number of your terms in the closest proximity first. So, usually, but not always, the further you get into the list of results, the less likely you are to find what you’re looking for.

News Sites: For topics dealing with current events, politics, economics and the like, news sites are also a good place to start. Search engines will often return results from these news agencies, but if you’ve had good luck with a particular site in the past, you might want to look there first.  A few to get you started are linked below.

• WorldNews - compiles news from 500 sources.
  Newsblaster - summary of the days events compiled by a computer.
  Newseum - take a look at the front page of 463 newspapers from 46 countries.
  BBC World News - news from the British perspective.

Don't Lose Your Site

It’s very easy to jump from one site to another by following links on each page.  Before you know it, you’ve lost track of the page you started with, or one of the ones along the way that you would have liked to use.  Following are a few tips and ideas for making sure you don’t lose track of sites you might want to use.

• If you’re using your own computer, you might want to make a folder in your favorites for that particular assignment, and as you come across a site, add it to the folder.  Don’t do this on public computers as the folder is not likely to remain there.
• If you’re looking at a site you know you want to use as a source, and come across a link that you’d like to follow, open it in a new browser window. This can be done in a few ways. Usually, if you right click on the link, one of the options is to “Open in New Window.” With some browsers, holding down the shift button while you left click on a link will open it in a new window.
• Start a new word processing document.  As you find sites that you’d like to use, highlight the whole address of the site, and copy it.  You can do this by right clicking on the highlighted address and choosing copy, by going to Edit in the top menu bar and choosing copy, or by using Ctrl+c.  Then, switch over to your word processing document and paste the address. You can do this by right clicking on the page and choosing paste, going to Edit and choosing past, or by using Ctrl+v.  Just be sure if using this method that you don’t close up the word processing program before saving or printing.

Not All Copying is Equal

As I said above, using the copy and paste method of keeping track of sites you might want to use as sources is acceptable. What is not acceptable is simply copying portions of text and pasting it into your assignments.  This is known as plagiarism, and will earn you a zero.  If you know, or have learned, anything about using the internet, you should know that it will be ridiculously easy for me to check and see if your assignment is coming to me in your own words.

Although I am asking you to look for internet sources to find information, I am not asking that these sources be your answers in themselves. I want you to use these sites to find information that you think about and apply to your answer.  If you are not sure of what constitutes plagiarism, check out this site.