ContinueUsing & Evaluating Electronic
Resources
Lesson 4
Searching the Internet and Evaluating the Resources Found
The Internet can be a useful resource for locating information to use in your research paper. However, the Internet poses unique problems for doing research.
Caution: Unlike library catalogs and online databases which index material produced by publishers, most material on the Internet has not gone through the editorial process. Therefore you must take special care in determining the quality and authenticity of a Web site. Don't rely on the Internet to be your main resource in researching a topic. If you focus your research efforts in standard print sources and use the Internet after you have mastered the search process, you will be better prepared to research future assignments successfully.
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web, which is a subset of the Internet, is an exciting source for students doing research, but it can be overwhelming to new users. Keep in mind that the quality of sources will vary tremendously. You need to make sure you apply your critical thinking and evaluation skills when attempting to determine whether a Web resource is useful for your topic. This Tutorial will provide you with a basic introduction to Internet evaluation skills. If you would like more detailed information on how to evaluate Internet resources please consult one of the following resources:
With hundreds of millions of Web pages to select from, finding the information you need is not always easy. Moreover, finding something specific can be frustrating. In spite of the difficulties, the sense of discovery and excitement in searching the Web can be a rewarding experience.
To locate information on the World Wide Web you must use special Web indexes. Although there are numerous Web indexes in existence, we will focus on two of the more popular commercial Web indexes in this tutorial . The first Web index that we will demonstrate is named Yahoo! and is known as a Web directory. The second is AltaVista, which is an example of a Web search engine. We will explain the differences between Web directories and Web search engines later.
One thing to know about Web indexes is that no one Web index catalogs the entire Internet. A recent study done by Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Guiles of the NEC Research Institute, and published in Nature magazine, found that most of the major Web search engines index less than 10 percent of the Web. And only about a total of 42 percent of the Web has been indexed. They found that Northern Light search engine indexed 16% of the Web, Snap 15.5%, AltaVista 15.5%, Hotbot 11.3% and Yahoo 7.4%. They also report that the majority of Web sites indexed are commercial sites--comprising 62.1% of the sites indexed. School and education sites make up 6%, Health 2.8%, Personal 2.3%, Societies 1.9%, Pornography 1.5%, Community 1.4%, Government 1.2% and Religion 0.8%.
These findings are important because they indicate that many Web sites are literally lost in cyberspace. If Web sites are not indexed they will not be found by searchers. "The study also underscores a little-understood feature of the Internet. While many users believe Web pages are automatically available to the search programs employed by such sites as Yahoo, Excite, and AltaVista, the truth is that finding, identifying and categorizing new Web pages requires a great expenditure of time, money and technology" (Los Angeles Times).
Let's start with a demonstration of how to use the Yahoo! browse feature.