Transcript Internet Searching Strategies/Techniques for Latin Teachers:

Internet Searching
Strategies/Techniques for
Latin Teachers:
A Guide to Finding What You
Want on the Internet
Presented by: Kate Lucia and Allan Collins
What is a “Search Engine”?
►
According to the American Heritage
Dictionary, a search engine is:
"1. a software program that searches
a database and gathers and reports
information that contains or is related
to specified terms, 2. a website whose
primary function is providing a search
engine for gathering and reporting
information available on the Internet
or a portion of the
Internet"
--http://www.bartleby.com
Meaning….
► It
is a computer program that matches your
search terms to WebPages or documents that are
available in the Internet.
► Examples:
www.yahoo.com
www.google.com
www.altavista.com
www.alltheweb.com
Meta-Search Engines
►
Meta-search engines:
"In a meta-search engine, you
submit keywords in its search
box, and it transmits your
search simultaneously to several
individual search engines and
their databases of web
pages. Within a few seconds,
you get back several results
from all the search engines
queried.”
--http://www.lib.berkeley.edu
►
►
In other words, a meta-search
engine searches other search
engines for results for your
query.
Examples:
www.ixquick.com
www.metacrawler.com
www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/
Links for more information about MetaSearch Engines:
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/search/s
earchint.html
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/search/
moresearch.html
Keywords
► Keywords: According to the American Heritage
Dictionary, a keyword is:
"a descriptive word; a word used as a reference point
for finding other words or information"
--http://www.bartleby.com
► In
other words, they are the words that you want
the search engine to look for in a document.
Strategies
►
Searching Strategies:
 When searching using a search engine or a meta-search engine, using
keywords and search terms is the easiest way to search. Here are
some strategies that will help you to be successful in your searching:
Use the most obvious terms for your search. For example, if you want to find
facts about Roman gods, use "Roman gods" as your search terms.
► Try not be too general. If you want to find facts about Roman gods, don't use
"Romans" as your search terms. Add "gods" to make it specific enough.
► If you want very specific information, try the specific terms first. If you aren't
successful, try making the search terms broader. For example, if "Roman
dinners" isn't successful, try "Roman dining".
► If you don't get the results that you want, try a different search engine or metasearch engine. They don't all search the same sites and databases.
►
Advanced Techniques,
a.k.a. “Librarians’ Tricks of the Trade”
► When using search engines, use the “Advanced Search” feature to cut
►
►
►
►
►
►
down on the number of “hits” that you get. (www.google.com,
www.metacrawler.com)
If you want a picture or image, click on the “Images” tab to search
pictures only (www.altavista.com)
Use “” to surround phrases so that the search engine searches for those
exact phrases, otherwise the engine will search for the words
individually
Most search engines have stop words like “a,an,the, and, or”. Use a
+ or – symbol to force the engine to include those words in your
search.
Remember that search engines and meta-search engines search for
keywords, not ideas. If the words you enter aren’t in the page/site
you won’t get the results you want.
Play with several search engines to decide which one is best for you.
More search tips:
 http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/lesson7.html
A Closer Look…
► Here
is a closer look at some popular search
engines:




Google
Yahoo
Altavista
Alltheweb
Foreign Language Teaching Sites/Resources
►
►
►
►
►
►
http://www.cortland.edu/flteach/flteach-res.html FL
Teach: Foreign Language Teaching Forum from SUNY
Cortland
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/ld/ld.html Instant Access: The
Foreign Language Teacher’s Guide to Learning Disabilities
http://www.csun.edu/~hcedu013/eslsp.html Foreign
Language Lesson Plans and Resources
http://www.education-world.com/foreign_lang/ Education
World’s Foreign Language Center
http://www.educationworld.com/foreign_lang/classroom/sp
anish.shtml Education World’s Spanish Page
http://www.educationworld.com/foreign_lang/classroom/fr
ench.shtml Education World’s French Page
Foreign Language Teaching Sites/Resources
(continued…)
►
►
►
►
►
►
►
http://www.educationworld.com/foreign_lang/classroom/latin.shtml
Education World’s Latin Page
http://www.educationindex.com/language/ Education Index’s
Language Resources
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/listspanish.html Hot
Internet Sites ¡en Español!
An Internet Hotlist on Spanish Resources
http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~weinberg/french.html Ressources en français
langue seconde
Resources for Students and Teachers of French as a Second Language
http://7-12educators.about.com/cs/foreignfrench/index.htm French
Language Resources (careful…lot’s of pop-ups!)
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/world/worldrw.html
Discovery School.com’s Kathy Schrock Guide for Educators
http://www.academicinfo.net/lang.html Academic Info Foreign
Language Study
Foreign Language Teaching Sites/Resources
(continued…again)
►
►
►
►
►
►
http://www.cal.org/ericcll/faqs/rgos/flint.html ERIC/CLL Resource
Guides Online Internet Resources for Foreign Language Teachers by
Kathleen Marcos, ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics
http://depts.washington.edu/trio/comp/reference/resources/foreign.sht
ml TRIO ThinkQuest Reference: Foreign Language and Travel
http://www.eduhound.com/ EduHounds references for Latin
http://school.discovery.com/homeworkhelp/bjpinchbeck/bjforeign.html
BJ Pinchbeck’s Homework Helper
http://www.ket.org/Education/IN/resources.html#forlang from
Kentucky Educational Television
http://www.du.edu/issa/foreignlanguage.html University of Denver
The Invisible Web
►
The Invisible (Hidden) Web is comprised of sites,
databases, clearinghouses, digital libraries, and other
information that search engines don’t “see”
►
Some Invisible Web resources are:
 http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/InvisibleWeb.html
Explanation of the invisible web and links to invisible web sites from Univ. of
Berkeley






http://www.invisible-web.net/
http://lii.org/
http://infomine.ucr.edu/
http://www.profusion.com/
http://www.completeplanet.com/
http://library.rider.edu/scholarly/rlackie/Invisible/Inv_Web.html
Invisible Web Databases (samples)
Taken from http://library.rider.edu/scholarly/rlackie/Invisible/Inv_Web.html
►
AnimalSearch (http://animalsearch.net/) - Database for family-safe animal-related sites.
►
ERIC (http://www.askeric.org/) - AskERIC contains the free, Web-based version of the ERIC Database, the
world's largest source of education information, with more than 1 million abstracts of documents and journal articles
on education research and practice.
►
NatureServe Explorer (http://www.natureserve.org/explorer) - Authoritative conservation info. on 50,000+
plants, animals, & ecological communities" in USA & Canada.
►
Nuclear Explosions Database (http://www.agso.gov.au/databases/20010926_4.jsp) - Australian
Geological Survey Organisation database of nuclear explosions (location, time, & size) around the world since 1945.
►
On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/) - "Type
in a series of numbers and this database will complete the sequence and provide the sequence name, along with its
mathematical formula, structure, references, and links."
►
PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) - PubMed provides access to over 12 million
MEDLINE citations, including links to sites providing full text articles & related resources. You will also want to explore
PubMed Central, an e-archive of full text articles in life sciences journal literature, offering unrestricted access to its
contents.
►
FindArticles.com (http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/PI/index.jhtml) - FindArticles.com is a free, searchable
Web archive of almost 500 published magazine and journal titles, 1998 to present. It provides "articles that can be
read in their entirety and printed at no cost."
Results: Points to Consider
► When
you get results from your search:
 Consider Precision v. Recall
►Recall
is the amount of relevant documents out of all
the possible documents
►Precision is the relevant documents in retrieved set
out of all the documents in a retrieved set
►When recall is high, precision is low
►When precision is high, recall is low
►Decide which is more important for your search need
►Do you need a lot of information or a few highly
relevant items?
Results: More Considerations
► When
you get your results, also think about:
 Authority: Who wrote the site? What are their
credentials? URL’s ending in .gov, .edu, .mil, .org tend
to be more reliable than .com (you can even search that
way on Google’s Advanced Search page Google )
 Remember that ANYONE can put information on the
Internet! Be careful!
 Currency: How up-to-date is the information? Check to
see if you can tell when the last time the site was
updated.
Conclusion
Information is easy to find on the Internet
and World Wide Web if you know how to
find it!
Try some of these tips and techniques and
see what you can do!!!