Finding Information on the Web Eric Marler, M.A., M.D., C.M., Dip Med, F.A.C.P., Consultant Color photos- vstavit- marler.jpg vo FRONT PAGE srazu

The World Wide Web enables nearly instantaneous access to information from nearly everywhere in the world. The Web is increasingly populated with information across a very wide spectrum of topics. Given Web access, the next key challenge is FINDING the INFORMATION you want.

WWW Virtual Library Subject Guides (1) Over the past 5 years, efforts have been made concurrently in in many fields to build SUBJECT GUIDES with CATEGORIES and TOPICS. Perhaps the best known of these is the World Wide Web Virtual Library (http://vlib.org/Overview.html).

Subject Guides are often complemented by keyword driven search tools. These and other Subject Guides provide an extraordinarily rich set of references to information. However, each subject guide demands daily maintenance by the content provider, adding new URLs and collecting and sorting news about breakthroughs. But which search tools to select?

Search Tools (1) 1. The coverage of any single engine ranged from a few percent to a maximum of one third of the "indexable Web"; 2. Combining the results of six engines yielded about 3.5 times as many documents on average as compared with the results from only one engine; 3. The size of the indexable Web is estimated (lower boundary) at 320 million pages. In a recent article, The coverage of the major World Wide Web search engines was analyzed, yielding some surprising results. Searching the World Wide Web Steve Lawrence, C. Lee Giles Computer Science, NEC Research Institute, 4 Independence Way, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA/E-mail: lawrence@research.nj.nec.com (S.L.) or giles@research.nj.nec.com (C.L.G.) Volume 280, Number 5360 Issue of 3 April 1998, pp. 98 - 100 Copyright _ 1998 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web (http://wwwmetrics.com/) Steve Lawrence, C. Lee Giles

MULTIENGINE search tool Search Tools (2) MULTIENGINE search tool Metacrawler Google InferenceFind These results point to the value of selecting a MULTIENGINE search tool.

Eric Marler, M.D. - Favorite Web Sites A set of health, medical and epidemiologic terms linked to a multiengine search tool - Google - can be found at: www.shrs.pitt.edu/marler/ Eric Marler, M.D. - Favorite Web Sites

Conclusions In my experience, a galaxy of topics is required to satisfy the quest for information. The very urologist that searches for the results of phase III trials of alternatives to Viagra also seeks information about the latest in digital cameras. The key to the Web lies in the unbridled curiosity of the common man. Perhaps there is no greater gift than a desktop or a laptop with a fast Internet connection. Additional reference: Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web http://wwwmetrics.com/