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Selected Internet Finding Tools for Students and Faculty
Subject Guides and Directories are created by human analysts (not mechanical web crawling software) who select and organize the very best web sites from around the world. The guides listed here have been selected because they have been widely recognized as useful to students, scholars, and researchers. (NOTE: Yahoo! does NOT evaluate the quality of sites it lists.)
Scout Report Archives - "contains only the best Internet resources as chosen by the editorial staff of the Scout Report." About 11,700 sites are organized using Library of Congress Subject Headings which makes this site very easy to browse and search. Part of the Internet Scout Project, the Scout Archive is located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Its mission is to assist in the advancement of resource discovery on the Internet."
INFOMINE - "is intended for the introduction and use of Internet/Web resources of relevance to
faculty, students, and research staff at the university level." Approximately 20,000 resources are organized for easy browsing and searching. Courtesy of the University of California
BUBL LINK - "is the name of a catalogue of selected Internet resources covering all academic subject areas and catalogued according to DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification). All items are selected, evaluated, catalogued and described. Links are checked and fixed each month. LINK stands for Libraries of Networked Knowledge.... The BUBL LINK catalogue currently holds over 11,000 resources. This is far smaller than the databases held by major search engines, but it can provide a more effective route to information for many subjects, across all disciplines."
Internet Public Library - "(IPL), is a public service organization and learning/teaching environment at the University of Michigan School of Information..." Although this site is best designed for the general public rather than an academic audience, the reference section will be useful for academic users
The Federal Web Locator - "is a service provided by the [Villanova University] Center for Information Law and Policy and is intended to be the one stop shopping point for federal government information on the World Wide Web. This list is maintained to bring the cyber citizen to the federal government's doorstep."
Yahoo! - is really a commercial portal. It provides news, free e-mail, stock quotes and a myriad of other services. Yahoo! is does NOT evaluate the quality of sites listed, but as the web's largest directory, it is very useful for finding specific web sites.
Search Engines
CAUTION:
Always use a critical eye in evaluating materials found on the Internet.
For
more information on WWW evaluation click here
Web surfers, both experienced and novice, should cruise by the Internet Tutorial at the University of Albany or Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial courtesy of the University of California at Berkeley. New surfers will benefit from their basic explanations: How the Internet works, protocols, browsers, URLS, and other mysterious ideas and terms are explained in an understandable way. Advanced web users will enjoy their tips/cautions on using the Internet as a research tool, the quick reference chart on search engine syntax, and more
Meta-Search Engines
The information below is provided courtesy of Library at University of California, Berkeley. To learn more about meta search engines, how they work, and best techniques for searching specific ones, check out their workshop on Meta-Search Engines
Ixquick - "Searches AOL, Live Directory, AltaVista, LookSmart, Excite, Lycos, MSN, FastSearch, GoTo, Snap, Hotbot, WebCrawler, Infoseek, Yahoo!"
SearchCaddy - Chooses 6 among: AllTheWeb/FastSearch, AltaVista, DirectHit, Infoseek, LookSmart, Northern Light, Webcrawler, Yahoo!. Can customize at bottom of results, or by clicking Simultaneously and going down to the Meta-Search section (upper part is not a true meta-search)."
ProFusion - "AltaVista, InfoSeek, LookSmart, Excite, Magellan, WebCrawler, GoTo, AllTheWeb/FastSearch, Yahoo! Can customize what is searched ("You choose"). Default is "best 3" - which varies."
MetaCrawler - "AltaVista, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Thunderstone, Excite, Google, Lycos, LookSmart, GoTo, About.com, DirectHit, RealNames"
Dogpile - is not recommended unless you customize it. According to the UC Berkeley experts the "default is (in this order) LookSmart, GoTo.com, Dogpile Web Catalog, Dogpile Open Directory, Direct Hit, About.com, InfoSeek, Real Names, AltaVista, Lycos, and Yahoo! and more."