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The
use of the Internet for researching, both for students and teachers,
has made it increasingly important for users to be able to quickly
access the information sought. While this can be more of a challenge
for the blind or visually impaired user, understanding search engines,
developing effective search strategies, and properly evaluating
Internet sources can greatly improve searching. The following material
should help both the quality and speed of your searching.
Description and Evaluation of
Search Engines
Assistive
Technology Training Online
This site, sponsored by the School
of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo,
provides information to help disabled elementary school children learn
with the effective use of assistive technology. Links may be found to
tutorials that explain how to use specific hardware devices and
software programs, suggestions on how to identify appropriate adaptive
technology, lists of links to national organizations, projects, and
list serves related to assistive technology.
Search Engine Showdown: The
Users' Guide to Web Searching
This is a detailed analysis of
Internet search engines, their features, databases, and strategies.
Learn advanced searching secrets and more.
Tutorials on Searching
BARE
BONES 101: A Very Basic Web Search Tutorial
If you're still getting those
1,670,000+ responses to your search queries on the Web, and you're too
busy to read the lengthy, and not always helpful, "help" screens to
find out how to improve your searching techniques. Help is here, in the
BARE BONES Tutorial. They are short and succinct; each can be read in a
few minutes. They are written so you can skip what you don't want and
come back whenever you need to.
Internet Tutorials
This site is one of the best guides
for searching on the Internet. Whether a beginner or an advanced
searcher, you are bound to learn something useful from this site hosted
by the University of New York, Albany. Topics include: Strategies for
evaluating resources found on the Internet; search engines, subject
directories, & the deep Web; how to choose a search engine; Boolean
searching; second generation searching and much more.
Yenza
"Yenza" -- a word meaning "do it"
in the Xhosa and Zulu languages -- is a guide to using the Internet for
research and teaching in the Social Sciences and Humanities. The site
includes links to resources for these purposes. In selecting them, the
project team has tried to choose resources which are highly rated by
subject experts."
Internet Beyond the
Basics
This course from The Hadley School
for the Blind goes beyond Internet basics and provides you with the
information and tools you need to safely use the Internet for everyday
activities. You will identify the threats to your computer as well as a
variety of tools, techniques, and common sense practices for keeping
your computer safe. Then you will discover how to use the Internet as a
major tool for research and reference, travel planning, and shopping.
Search Tools
A browsable list of terms
associated with searching and search engines. Learn how to distinguish
a false drop from a fuzzy match, explore Boolean operators, and much
more. From search engine specialist Avi Rappoport.
Evaluating Sites
Bibliography on
Evaluating Internet Resources
This bibliography, originally
created for a panel discussion at a regional conference in Wisconsin,
has grown with the increasing number of documents which address the
problems and issues related to teaching and using critical thinking
skills to evaluate Internet resources.
How
to Tell If You Are Looking at a Great Web Site
Because anyone can post anything on
the Web, it is harder to determine the quality of electronic
information than the print information found in the traditional
library. This site, from the American Library Association, provides
useful criteria for evaluating a good Web site.
Teaching
Undergrads Web Evaluation
This site, a companion to the one
above, is designed to teach undergraduate college students how to
evaluate Web resources for their research. The author argues that the
same criteria that apply for print sources are applicable for their
electronic equivalents: accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and
coverage. The site is also appropriate for high-school students.
Multnomah County Library
Homework Center
The Multnomah (Oregon) County
Library contains several links on searching and evaluating Web sources.
The site is appropriate for either high school or college students.
HTML
Howstuffworks
How Web Pages Work http
Have you ever wondered how a Web
page works? Have you ever wanted to create your own Web page, complete
with titles and text and graphic icons? Have you ever heard the word
"HTML" and wondered what it means? This HowStuffWorks site looks at the
art and science of Web pages and experiment with a number of techniques
that you can try out on your own machine today. Site offers a tool that
lets you try out HTML and view it instantly.
HTML Helper
If you want to create a web page
but don't have any idea how to do it, this site will help. This site
starts from the basics and works up to some of the more advanced
techniques.
Specialty Search Engines
Search Engine Watch
While the site is somewhat
cluttered and could be more accessible for use with a screen reader,
investing the additional few minutes to overcome these hurdles will be
time well spent. This site gets our vote for the single best site on
searching. Topics of special interest include:
Search
Engine Math
Explains how to use simple commands
to improve the results you get from searching
Power
Searching
This is a summary of how to do
advanced searching with the major search engines;
Kids
Search Engines
Search
Engines World-wide;
includes lists of some of the major
search engines, news engines, specialty engines, engines for kids, and
country specific engines;
Web Searching
This page of the Internet Public
Library provides a good description of the major search engines as well
as comments on their primary strengths and weaknesses. This can be
especially helpful when you are trying to decide which engine is most
likely to be appropriate for your needs.
The
Invisible Web
The Web is increasingly moving away
from being a collection of documents and becoming a multidimensional
repository for sounds, images, audio, and other formats. Because much
of this information is not accessible to many general search engines’
software spiders, this site attempts to describe specific search tools
that will lead to this hidden content. Some of these tools include
directories, searchable sites, free Web databases, and a few general
and many specialized search engines.
HeadlineSpot.com:
US Newspapers Online News Headlines, World News, Current Events
As the title suggests, the site
provides a good summary of breaking news. It is easier to negotiate
than some others which offer the same coverage. The trade off that is
made is to lose some of the variety of news coverage for convenience of
navigation.
The Internet Scout Report
The Internet Scout Report provides
a fast, convenient way to stay informed about valuable resources on the
Internet. Hundreds of announcements are filtered weekly for the most
valuable and authoritative resources online. The results are then
summarized and posted on this site. In addition, a free e-mail is
available three times weekly on science & engineering, social
sciences & humanities, or business & economics.
Search Links
A topical listing of annotated
links to major search engines and search tools devoted to news,
multimedia, countries, children's sites, and more. The Specialty Search
Engines section includes domain, government, legal, travel, and other
special topics.
Firstfind.info
Designed for users new to the
Internet, this browsable directory provides annotated listings for Web
sites in a variety of topical areas. Some listings are specific to New
York, but most are of interest to general users. Descriptions of Web
sites are written in simple English. The "Help" section has tutorials
on navigating the Internet and Firstfind.info, and on using PDF files.
Pandia Powersearch
Pandia is an all-in-one search site
devoted to Internet searching. Not only do you find state of the art
search tools like the Pandia Metasearch Engine, Pandia Radio Search and
the Pandia Plus Web Directory; there is also a wealth of information on
search engines and directories, search engine optimization and
marketing and Web searching in general.
Kosmix
Beta version of an Internet search
engine that is designed to let "people search less, and discover more
great stuff." Searchable by keywords in these categories: health,
travel, video games, finance, and U.S. politics. Kosmix plans to add
more categories.
KidsClick
KidsClick! was created by a group
of librarians at the Ramapo Catskill Library System, as a logical step
in addressing concerns about the role of public libraries in guiding
their young users to valuable and age appropriate web sites.
Google
Scholar
Google Scholar enables you to
search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed
papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from
all broad areas of research. You can use Google Scholar to find
articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional
societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly
articles available across the web.
Fin
dory News: Personalized News
Findory News is a newspaper built
just for you. Other web news sites show the same news to everyone.
Findory News shows you articles that you want to see. It adapts to your
reading habits and emphasizes news articles from around the world that
are most likely to be of interest to you, it even will focus on the
particular parts of the world you seem to be interested in. If you are
interested in a particular political campaign, Findory News will favor
articles on that campaign. By paying attention to the news you've read
recently, Findory.com finds the news articles you don't want to miss.
Medstory
Medstory is a search engine devoted
to medical and health issues. Its mission is to enable users to search
complex fields on the Web intelligently. The authors of the site say
that they are starting with health and medicine because it is a field
where they have expertise based on their work with health-related
organizations.
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