Uses computer programs to search web sites
GOOGLE http://www.google.com/
WISENUT http://wisenut.com/
ALTAVISTA http://www.altavista.com/
Searches across many search engines at once
VIVISIMONE http://vivisimo.com/ Organizes results into meaningful clusters
IXQUICK http://www.ixquick.com metasearch using phrases, Boolean, wildcards, capitals. Weighs value of hits by using major engines' top ten results
DOGPILE http://www.dogpile.com
Topics Selected and organized by people
LIBRARIANS' INDEX TO THE INTERNET http://lii.org/ -useful web sites selected and evaluated by librarians and organized into topics.
HOMEWORK CENTER http://www.multcolib.org/homework/
GOOGLE DIRECTORY http://directory.google.com/
INTERNET PUBLIC LIBRARY http://www.ipl.org/
CORBIS http://www.corbis.com/
DITTO http://www.ditto.com/
MICROSOFT CLIP ART http://dgl.microsoft.com/
CHOOSING THE BEST SEARCH ENGINE FOR YOUR INFORMATIONAL NEEDS http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html
If you are not happy with your results, try another search engine; check your spelling; or try synonyms or related, broader or narrower terms. By all means, use some strategy. Though they have many quirks, most engines allow users the following advanced techniques.
| Search Strategy | Explanation | Examples |
| Boolean operators | AND limits your search, requiring that both
or all word appear
OR is used to capture synonyms or related words NOT eliminates possibilities that you suspect will cause problems (Some search engines use + and — for AND and NOT |
Vietnam AND protest AND students
Japan AND cooking car OR automobile coronary OR heart Martin Luther NOT King China NOT dishes |
| Wildcards | An asterisk (*) or a questionmark (?) may be used to stand for any character or string of characters. | teen* (picks up teenage, teenagers,
or teens)
Herz? (for Herzegovina) wom?n (for woman or women) |
| Natural language searches | Some search engines allow you to type in questions as you would think or speak them. | Why is the sky blue? |
| Phrases | You often will want words to appear together in specific order. Commonly, quotation marks ("") set words off as phrases to be searched as a whole. (Some search engines use parentheses, commas, or hyphens instead of quotation marks.) | "vitamin A"
"bed and breakfast" "George Washington Carver" |
| Proximity | Words often are not meaningful in your search unless they appear near each other in a document. In large documents, words separated by lots of text are generally unrelated. ADJ specifies that two words appear next to each other. NEAR/25 specifies that two words appear within 25 words of each other. | global ADJ warming
Eric Clapton NEAR/10 Cream |
| Field searching | This feature restricts searches to certain portions of Web documents. It allows you to specify that the search words appear in the title, URL, or first paragraph. | title: cancer
URL: epa |
| Case sensitivity | Most search engines are case insensitive by default. However, there are some that recognize uppercase and lowercase variations. | Baker (retrieves name and eliminates
reference to cake and bread makers)
AIDS (eliminates reference to helpers) China (eliminates references to dishes) |
From Power Tools: 100+ Essential Forms and Presentations for Your School Library Information Program by Joyce Kasman Valenza. Copyright 1998 American Library Association. Used by permission of ALA Editions. Reproduction for nonprofit educational purposes permitted.
Creating a Bibliography or Works Cited Page Using
MLA Format
Writing Research Papers: Central Bucks' Guidelines for Research http://www.cbsd.org/curriculum/standards/research/cover.html
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab Guidelines for MLA format
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html
Easybib http://www.easybib.com/
Unami Library Home Page / Online Databases / Library Catalog
Book Recommendations / Reading Olympics / Websites for Research
Unami Middle School
160 South Moyer Road
Chalfont, Pennsylvania 18914
267-893-3404
If you have questions or comments, please email srosenthal@cbsd.org
Website updated May 2005