WISER Humanities: Quality Information on the Internet Johanneke Sytsema Linguistics Subject Consultant Judy Reading OULS User Education Co-ordinator

Aims of the session We will cover: An overview of the types of web search tools Using gateways Functionality and focus of different search engines Summary of helpful search techniques Evaluating results

Two different approaches: Search engines –advantages broad reach, everything on the web that has been indexed or “crawled” Lets you to pinpoint an exact phrase or concept –disadvantages brings back too much information, if searches are not limited sources may not be authoritative Web directories and gateways –advantages quality control Makes browsing in a topic area easier –disadvantages does not encompass everything, you might miss good material may not be current focus/emphasis may not be what you want

Directories/indexes/Gateways Lists of web resources grouped together in a structured manner INTUTE subject based web resources for education and research (part of RDN Resource Discovery Network) British Academy Portal (humanities and social sciences, academic) INFOMINE scholarly internet resource collections PINAKES : a gateway to gateways

INTUTE

Search Example: archeology/papyrology ‘Dead Sea scrolls and Qumran’ contains info and is a gateway to other sites Duke papyrus archive contains information about over 1,300 papyri Great Isaiah Scroll: images, translation and discussion of the text

INTUTE offers RSS feeds You will be automatically updated when new quality sites in your subject area are added to the database

Gateways STELLA: Gateway produced by Glasgow University –English and Scottish language links STELLA/links.htm Refers to organisations, gateways, text archives No search Points to useful resources

PINAKES

E-books Intute: advanced search, resource type e- books Google books Use ‘full view only’ for full text Project Gutenberg / over 25,000 books for free free books on the web, classified according to Library of Congresshttp://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ British Library (requires installing software) ndex.html

E-books (2) Subscription e-books via OxLip+: –ACLS Humanities E-book: 2000 full text titles –EEBO: early printings from –ECCO: English titles from –Science Direct 82 titles in Arts & Humanities –Oxford Text Archive –Oxford Scholarship Online –Oxford Reference Online Dictionaries

OAIster Union catalogue of digital resources, including books,

Invisible or deep web Subscription content Private sites (eg registration or log-in protected) Dynamic content – returned from a query or completed form Unlinked content File types which can’t be searched by search engines eg multimedia files. PDF used to be unavailable

Wikipedia on “The deep web”

Invisible web: strategies for finding it Drill into quality sites: OpenDOAR – to search academic repositorieswww.opendoar.org Directory of Open Access Journals OAIster Jiscmail for academic mailing listswww.jiscmail.ac.uk OxLIP+ to find quality subscription contenthttp://oxlip-plus.ouls.ox.ac.uk Use INTUTE and other gateways to identify quality sites Try World of Learning online via OxLIP+ for academic sitesOxLIP+ Use a search engine to locate key sites for your subject area Use a search engine which specialises in the invisible web eg or

Google Worth looking in the Advanced search and Advanced Search Tips to see what Google offers. You can search: for a particular resource or kind of information such as books, blogs, images or news Within a particular site or create a customised search engine searching sites you select Sites which link to a particular site or are similar to a site The order of search terms matters and you can repeat key words to influence what you retrieve Normally Google automatically truncates and combines with “and” and gives your words as a phrase first then separately. Phrase searching (using quotation marks) can help to make searches specific Results are ranked for relevance through a secret formula which includes the popularity of pages

Advantages: quick and easy to use, full-text searching, cited by links, huge general resource linked to local holdings as well as full-text if available Disadvantages: not comprehensive – most recent and oldest material may be missing, doesn’t have the full functionality of subscription bibliographic databases eg can’t mark from a list or save searches to combine sets, no controlled vocabulary Use Advanced search options and read through the search tips and help offered to make the most of Google Scholar Getting better all the time – may provide “good enough” quick results but not (yet?) sufficient for a thorough literature search

Google Scholar Make sure you have Oxford selected in your preferences so the links to Oxford holdings works.

Search engines Everyone’s favourite - Google

Picture by Philip Bradley

Alternatives to Google? Exalead Clusty Ask MSN

Search engines

Custom search engines Google allows you to create your own search engine so you can for example limit to high quality sites you choose. The Social Science Library have created one for statistical information

Metasearch engines A tool that searches across a number of individual search engines Clusty ( – groups results to make it easier to browsewww.clusty.com Metacrawler ( – links to the results across other search engineswww.metacrawler.com Thumbshots ( – allows you to compare results in different search engineswww.thumbshots.com

Clusty

Metacrawler: searches across Google, Yahoo, Ask.. etc

Metasearch sites which compare search engines Jux2 – Google, Yahoo and MSNJux2

Wayback machine

Keeping track of useful websites Save favourites in your browser Use bookmarking tools eg delicious StumbleUpon Furl Create personalised start page with saved links i-Google Netvibes Pageflakes Set up RSS feeds via your browser or into a reader such as Google reader

Evaluating results When was it produced? Who is responsible for the information? Why has it been published on the Internet? Where is the page situated? What is the value to you?

Evaluate your results… Who wrote it? –Do they belong to an organisation (university, NGO, company etc) that you trust –Why did they write it? (genuine interest / hoax…) –How knowledgeable are they (check against what you already know) How up to date is it? –Page last updated statement / last article cited / last event mentioned –Check against what you already know Who’s linking to it? –organisations you trust? Is it useful to you? Try INTUTE’s internet detective tutorial – l

example mpaginae/ mpaginae/ Aim of this site? Who made it? When was it made? What can be searched?

example This site in English About us Copyright & colofon

Summary For focussed results use Specific search engines Meta-search engines Focus your search strategy For quality results use evaluated resources: Directories Gateways Databases

This presentation will be available from the WISER Presentations Archive Contact presenters if we can help further