HOW TO FIND HIGH-QUALITY MATERIALS Five tables from the textbook have been adapted to make it easy for you to find good information quickly.
Internet Search Tools | | Search Engines | Google
www.google.com | A fast and comprehensive search engine, Google is the first option that many searchers try. Its "Advanced Search" feature is worth learning and using. | AltaVista
www.altavista.com | Select AltaVista's "Advanced Search" for highly sophisticated features such as "NEAR." | Ixquick
www.ixquick.com MetaCrawler
www.metacrawler.com | Ixquick and MetaCrawler are meta-search engines that collect results from over a dozen search engines at once. This prowess sounds impressive -- and sometimes meta-search engines do find what you want -- but for difficult-to-find material, a single search engine is superior. | Subject Directories | Yahoo
www.yahoo.com | Although Yahoo has a search feature, its strength is its directory. Select a broad category and "drill down" to narrower and narrower subcategories. For example, to find documents on cloning, select these headings in succession: Science > Biology > Genetics > Cloning. | About
www.about.com | Use this site as a subject directory first, and then --if you still haven't found what you're looking for --try its search feature. Each category on the Website is hosted by a man or woman who is identified as a guide, or expert. | Gateways to Specialized Resources | Librarians' Index to the Internet
www.lii.org | Librarians at the University of California, Berkeley, created this site for their campus and then made it available to students throughout the world. | Internet Public Library
www.ipl.org/ref | Operated by the University of Michigan, Internet Public Library provides links to quality sources -- hand-picked by librarians. | WWW Virtual Library
www.vlib.org | Virtual Library is a catalog run by volunteers who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert. | Collections of Full-Text Articles | Yahoo Full Coverage
dailynews.yahoo.com/fc | For current events, Yahoo News provides well-chosen packets of newspaper and magazine articles. | FindArticles.com
www.findarticles.com | This free online service searches for the complete text of articles in more than 300 magazines and journals. | Magazine Portal
www.magportal.com/ | This portal leads to thousands of magazine articles on a wide variety of subjects. | LibrarySpot
www.libraryspot.com | Under Shortcuts, click on "Search full-text articles." Follow the links to the websites of many different publications. | Books and Book Pages | Amazon.com
www.amazon.com | Use keywords or phrases to search over 120,000 books. For some books, you can see the actual page, or pages, where your keywords appear. | The Online Books Page
digital.library.upenn.edu/books/index.html
| The University of Pennsylvania provides links to over 20,000 books that are available on the Internet. | Expert Sites | Yahoo
www.yahoo.com | For links to sites that feature advice and opinions of experts, visit Yahoo. Under Web Directory, select "Reference" and then "Ask an Expert." | Google Answers
answers.google.com | You can pay a fee for expert advice, although sometimes you can find the answer at no charge by searching through the site's database of archived comments. | Discussion Forums | Google Groups
groups.google.com | On hundreds of different topics, people throughout the world everyday post messages on discussion forums. To find out what has been written on a given topic, use keywords to search the archives. | Yahoo! Groups
groups.yahoo.com | These discussion forums are similar to the groups accessed by Google. You can search the archives of any group. |
[Back to Top]
Search Options | Research Question: "Why do some women stay in relationships in which they are physically abused?" | Option | Example | Discussion | Keywords unmarked | women abuse physical | This option flags all pages that contain any of the keywords—a strategy that sometimes yields too many documents. In this example, the researcher would get thousands of irrelevant hits on such issues as child abuse and physical fitness. If this option is unsatisfactory, the strategies below can be tried to make a search more manageable. | Plus sign | +women +abuse +physical | A plus sign in front of a word means that all documents retrieved must contain that word—a good way to trim the number of hits. In this example, a document must contain all three words. | Minus sign | +women +abuse +physical -war
-prison -work | Minus signs exclude pages that contain these words. In this case, the researcher doesn't want information about violence against women in war, prison, and the workplace. | Phrase | "domestic violence against women" | Using double-quotation marks creates a searchable phrase. Although often highly fruitful, this option will omit relevant pages that don't use the exact phrase. | Wild card | +abus* +women +physical | A wild card (represented by a symbol such as an asterisk) finds words that start the same but end differently. In this example, abus* will yield documents that contain "abuse," "abusive," "abused," and "abuser." | AND, OR | violence AND (women OR wives) AND (spouse OR husband OR partner) | These options, like the two below, are called Boolean operators, and they permit fine-tuning. Note that parentheses allow the use of synonyms. | NOT | women AND violence NOT workplace NOT office | This query would be useful if one wanted to focus just on the home and exclude violence at work. | NEAR | women NEAR violence | NEAR finds words that appear within 5 to 30 words of one another (each search engine that carries this feature has a different range). This powerful option avoids a common situation: an article that mentions women on one page and violence on another, but doesn't discuss violence against women. | Most search engines offer some, but not all, of these options. Only a few—such as Alta Vista (www.altavista.com)—offer all of them. In some cases, the options are available only if you click on "Advanced Search." Each search engine has a Help service that will tell you what features are available and how to use them. |
[Back to Top]
Where to Find Materials | Question | Likely Sources | Where can I find books on a particular subject? | Your library's electronic catalog lists the books it has on your topic. If it doesn't have a book that you want, it can probably borrow it from another library for you. If you want to buy a book, you can visit a bookstore or order on the Internet via on-line stores like Amazon.com (www.amazon.com/). | Where can I find the complete text of magazine, journal, and newspaper articles? | The best selection of articles is likely to be found on the electronic databases licensed by your college library and available only to its patrons. A lesser, but sometimes adequate, source is Internet collections of articles (see the table "Internet Search Tools" on this Website). | Where can I get information about recent news events? | Your library carries daily newspapers and weekly newsmagazines. On the Internet, visit sites such as The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/), The Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com/), and Yahoo Daily News (dailynews.yahoo.com). Links for other publications can be found at RefDesk.com (www.refdesk.com/). | Where can I find background information on a subject? | Consult encyclopedias. For a list of Internet encyclopedias, consult Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/ref32.00.00). For narrow subjects, your library should have specialized works such as The Harvard Guide to Women's Health and Encyclopedia of the American Military. | Where can I find on-line books, magazines, poems, and speeches? | Visit Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org), click on Reading Room, and select the type of publication that you want (book, magazine, etc.). To view copies of pages in books, go to Amazon.com (www.amazon.com) and use keywords and phrases to search for relevant pages. | Where can I get transcripts or summaries of television reports? | Visit PBS (www.pbs.org/), ABC (www.abc.go.com/), CBS (www.cbs.com/), and NBC (www.nbc.com/). If a report is not listed, you may find it in the site's archives. | Where can I find government information such as laws and statistics? | Go to LibrarySpot (www.libraryspot.com/). Under "Reference Desk," choose "Government." For activities and laws of the U. S. Congress, visit THOMAS (thomas.loc.gov). | Where can I find pictures and video clips? | Visit Google (www.google.com), choose Images, and then Advanced Image Search in order to specify size and format. AltaVista (www.altavista.com/image/default) links to images (photos and illustrations), audio clips, and video clips. Ixquick (www.ixquick.com/) offers similar options. | If Internet search engines and subject directories don't find what I'm looking for, is there any other option on the Internet? | Before you give up on the Internet, try the sites listed in the "Internet Search Tools" table under "Gateways to Specialized Resources." Also try AllSearchEngines.com (www.allsearchengines.com), Profusion (www.profusion.com), and Infomine (infomine.ucr.edu/). | How can I contact organizations dedicated to causes and issues? | Go to Yahoo (www.yahoo.com/) Under Web Directory, select "Society," and then "Issues and Causes." Choose a category, and you will find lists of organizations. Another approach is to use keywords on a search engine. | Where can I find information about cultures and ethnic groups? | Your library has reference works such as Africana and The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America. On the Internet, visit Yahoo (www.yahoo.com/) Under Web Directory, select in succession, "Society," "Cultures and Groups," "Cultures," and then a particular group. | How can I contact experts for information? | On your campus and in your community, interview local experts. On the Internet, some Web pages cite experts and give their e-mail address; for example, The Asia Society (www.asiasource.org/) has a database of scholars to whom you can send letters or e-mail. You can also pose questions to experts on expert Websites (see "Internet Search Tools" table). | How can I find out what issues and concerns are being discussed on other college campuses? | To enhance a speech with the experiences and observations of students on other campuses, browse on-line campus newspapers. For listings, visit directory.google.com and follow this sequence: News > Colleges and Universities > Newspapers > United States. | Where can I find statistics, maps, and technical data? | Libraries have technical reference books; almanacs of statistical data, and atlases and gazetteers containing maps and geographical information. On the Internet, visit LibrarySpot (www.libraryspot.com/) and choose an appropriate heading under "Reference Desk." | Where can I find word definitions, pronunciation, synonyms, and history? | In the library, consult general dictionaries such as Oxford English Dictionary or specialized dictionaries such as Random House American Sign Language Dictionary. On the Internet, Bartleby.com (www.bartleby.com/) offers the American Heritage Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus (for synonyms). Some sites, such as Encarta World English Dictionary (dictionary.msn.com) offer audio clips of the correct pronunciation. | Where can I find biographies of famous people? | Your library has biographical dictionaries such as Distinguished Asian Americans and Women in World History. On the Internet, visit LibrarySpot (www.libraryspot.com/) and select "Biographies" for several good links. | Where can I find quotations? | Your library should have collections such as The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women. On the Internet, Bartleby.com (www.bartleby.com/) lets you search two excellent anthologies of quotations (Simpson's and Bartlett's), the King James Bible, and the entire works of Shakespeare. For quotations Websites, visit Yahoo (www.yahoo.com). Under Web Directory, select "Reference" and then "Quotations." |
[Back to Top]
Free Multimedia Materials on the Internet | For classroom speeches, students may download and use multimedia files from Websites without getting permission because they are engaged in a school project -- a one-time, educational, noncommercial use that is permitted under copyright law. For many career and community presentations, however, speakers must seek and receive permission before using Web materials. (See Chapter 7 in the text for details about copyright.) | Website | Options | Google
groups.google.com | Click on Images and then Advanced Image Search, which permits you to specify file size (small, medium, large) and format (JPEG,etc.). | AltaVista
www.altavista.com | Choose Images, Audio, or Video. While most of the material is free, AltaVista does include some photo collections that require a fee for downloading. | Yahoo
www.yahoo.com | Next to the Search box, change the setting from "Web" to "Images." | Ixquick
www.ixquick.com | Choose the Pictures or MP3 (audio) button before searching. | Ditto.com
www.ditto.com | This service searches for photos, drawings, and cartoons. | Lycos Multimedia
www.multimedia.lycos.com | Choose Multimedia and then Pictures, Audio, or Video. | Librarians' Index to the Internet
www.lii.org | In the search box, type "photos" or "graphics." | Digital Librarian
www.digital-librarian.com | Click on "Images" for a comprehensive list of photos, most of them historical. |
[Back to Top]
Evaluations of Websites | Directories with Rated Sites | These directories provide links to Websites that are ranked according to quality. | - Librarians' Index to the Internet (www.lii.org) selects only reliable sites and often appends an evaluation, which you can reach by clicking on the "Comments" box.
- Infomine (infomine.ucr.edu/) features Websites that have been evaluated by librarians at several top U.S. colleges. Look for "Browse Options."
| Selective Directories | These directories don't assign a rank, but all their links are to sites that are considered worth visiting. | | Misinformation Alerts | These services try to expose scams, quackery, and phony news-not only in Websites, but in society at large. | - Quackwatch (www.quackwatch.com) is edited by Stephen Barrett, M.D., former professor of health education at Pennsylvania State University.
- The Skeptic's Dictionary (www.skepdic.com) is edited by Robert T. Carroll, professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College.
- About (www.about.com) has many articles that can be retrieved by searching for "Net hoaxes" and/or "Scams."
|
[Back to Top] |
