Show:
Searches
Subject Directories
Gateways and Databases
Search Tips and Strategies
Boolean Logic
100
Huge databases of web page files that have been assembled automatically by machine.
What are Search Engines?
100
Unlike search engines, these are created and maintained by human editors, not electronic spiders or robots.
What are Subject Directories?
100
Collections of databases and informational sites, arranged by subject, that have been assembled, reviewed and recommended by specialists, usually librarians.
What are Gateways?
100
Universal Resource Locator
What is a url?
100
These are used to link words and phrases for more precise queries.
What are Boolean Operators?
200
Search engines that compile their own searchable databases on the web.
What are Individual Searches?
200
Directories that have been created or taken over by commercial interests and then reconfigured to act as gateways to the web. They offer additional services such as email, current news, stock quotes, travel information and maps.
What are portals?
200
These are two kinds of gateways.
What are library gateways and portals?
200
A structured information query with specific key words or phrases.
What is a search statement?
200
Boolean logic takes its name from this British mathematician.
Who is George Boole?
300
Searches that do not compile databases. Instead, they search the databases of multiple sets of individual engines simultaneously.
What are Metasearchers?
300
These vertical portals are subject-specific directories, as opposed to the broader, more generalized smorgasbord of subjects and other links commonly found in portals.
What are Vortals?
300
Databases devoted to a single subject, created by professors, researchers, experts, governmental agencies, business interests, and other subject specialists and/or individuals who have a deep interest in, and professional knowledge of, a particular field and have accumulated information and data about it.
What are subject specific databases (vortals)?
300
Words that many search engines DON'T stop for when searching texts and titles on the web.
What are Stop Words?
300
This Boolean operator actually narrows your search by retrieving only documents that contain every one of the keywords you enter. The more terms you enter, the narrower your search becomes
What is AND?
400
A set of rules for returning the most relevant pages at the top of the list?
What is ranking?
400
They review and select sites for inclusion in their directories on the basis of previously determined selection criteria. The resources they list are usually annotated.
Who are editors?
400
There is a large portion of the Web that search engine spiders cannot, or may not, index. It includes, among other things, pass-protected sites, documents behind firewalls, archived material, the contents of certain databases, and information that isn't static but assembled dynamically in response to specific queries.
What is the "Invisible Web"?
400
Two signs used in front of words to force their inclusion and/or exclusion in searches.
What are the plus (+) and minus (-) signs?
400
This Boolean operator expands your search by returning documents in which either or both keywords appear. The more keywords you enter, the more documents you will retrieve.
What is OR?
500
"robots" ("bots") that crawl through web space from link to link, identifying and perusing pages
What are spiders?
500
Two subject directories that have partnered with and developed their own search engines that are very powerful.
What are MSN and Yahoo?
500
Computer internet etiquette.
What is "Netiquette"?
500
Use these marks around phrases to ensure they are searched exactly as is, with the words side by side in the same order.
What are double quotation marks (" ")?
500
Using parentheses to separate keywords when you are using more than one operator and three or more keywords in order to combine several search statements into one search statement.
What is "Nesting"?