Finding Quality Information on the Internet

Search engines, like Google, send search bots, also called crawlers, spiders, or robots, out onto the Internet to read websites and return with key information including: important terms, website images, & an analysis of the site’s links. This information is stored in large computer databases and indexed. Your searches are run in these computers rather than out on the Internet. The results are usually ranked to bring the strongest answers to the top.

Tips:
¬Familiarize yourself with the “advanced” features, which will usually save you time by helping focus your search. 

For more information on Search Engines try:

UC-Berkeley, "Finding Information on the Internet". Arguably, the best web search tutorial.

SearchEngineWatch. Web searching tips.

NoodleTools. Web searching tips.

Pandia (Oslo Norway) Tools for Searching the Internet. Web searching tips.

IPL. Web searching. Web searching tips.

¬For search engines in other countries try:

Search Engine Colossus.com

Subject directories start with broad categories and branch off into narrower & narrower  subdivisions. Many also have a keyword search.
Here are some recommended ones:

Librarians' Internet Index (LII), which is publicly-funded, has a weekly newsletter. You can also search and browse the website for some of the best reserach sites on the Internet. It has tens of thousands of librarian maintained entries organized into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related catagories.

INFOMINE is a virtual library of Internet resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level. It contains useful Internet resources such as databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information.

Bulletin Board for Libraries Selected Internet resources arranged by academic subject area.

The Google Directory indexes about 1.5 million web pages, selected by the Open Directory Project and enhanced by Google searching and ranking. The Open Directory Project is a large public directory managed by Netscape and maintained by a group of volunteer editors from around the world who evaluate sites for inclusion in the directory. The web pages selected by these editors are organized into a number of broad categories under which there are many more specific subcategories. Google uses this hierarchy.

Internet Public Library Ready Reference Collection Navigate online collections by subject area, find research tools, more.

Library Spot Award-winning library and reference information portal.

Scout Report Weekly review of web content from UW-Madison.

WWW Virtual Library Subject guide to high-quality resources on the Internet.

Virtual Training Suite Interactive tutorials for finding the best online resources for particular subject areas, i.e. Humanities, Business, Health and Life Sciences, etc.

The Yahoo! Directory is a human-created and maintained library of web sites organized into categories and subcategories. Yahoo! editors developed the list's structure and review websites for potential inclusion.

¬ No search engine or subject directory is comprehensive! While there is overlap, each will cover unique sites. If you aren't happy with your results, just try another engine or directory.

Finding visual & sound sites:
Here are some links:  

Pandia's excellent collection of links.

Google Image Search, The most comprehensive image search on the web.

YouTube

AOL Video, formerly Singingfish - large audio & video index, configurable, searches saved.

Yahoo!Search video, images.

Lycos MultiMedia - search pictures, audio, video, mp3.

Altavista- select format, size, etc - images, mp3/audio, video.

American Memory US historical maps, motion pictures, photos and prints, sound recordings.

Creative Commons search audio, images, text, video, and other formats that are free to share online.

FindSounds - locates sound effects, musical instruments, animals.

«¬ Ask Us for Help at any step of this process. Research Help Desk, 715 425-3343