Web Research Tools
When we use the Web for research, we often start with reputable search engines like Google. No matter what search we perform, we can expect thousands of results, but we have time to examine maybe just the ones on the first couple of pages. Consequently, it is important to find research tools online that give us maybe fewer, but more relevant, results.
Take a look at three research tools on the Web and try them to find information on your paper topic. What do you find useful or not so useful about each of them? How are they similar or different?
- Google - Uncle Sam (different from regular Google)
- Librarians' Index to the Internet
- Internet Public Library
I think google-uncle sam is just like google. librarians' index and internet public library seem to be nice, useful and professional since they have different categories which make it easier to search. I prefer to work on google because it has the best search engine which finds almost all the related pages.
Halil
Posted by Halil SAKA on October 28, 2004 09:52 PMI tested all three of these search engines and i think that i like uncle sam's google the best. I think it might be because i am more comfortable with google, because i use regular google a lot.
I didnt like the way the internet public library page was set up so i wouldnt use it.
I searched "Los Alamos" on all 3 of them. And the google one seemed to have more pertinent information for what i was looking for. But the other 2 sites seemed to be very respectable and useful if I was looking for something differently. For instance, the Librarian's... had only eleven pages, but the only page that i could use was the first one and it was first when searching google. And the third one did not have any sites I could use, in fact it didn't appear to have found los alamos except some random newspaper that was realted to i not sure what.
Posted by kevin on October 29, 2004 03:35 AMAfter utilizing all three search engines,I personally think that google-uncle sam was the most useful for my topic:airbag safety. Not only am I more familiar with the google search engine, but it had the most information. The other two seemed respectable, however they didn't seem to be useful for my topic. The Internet Public Library site actually really did not have any information for my topic.
Posted by Rakesh Mehta on October 29, 2004 10:03 AMI found google(uncle sam) more useful than the others. I didnt find enough information relating "caffeine and sports" to each other on the other links. The only thing I have to worry about using the sources that I found in google, would be making sure the author is credible. There are a lot of facts on the internet so it would be helpful if you look at different sites that discuss the same topic before you decide the first one you read is correct.
Posted by Edgar on October 29, 2004 11:15 AMI've always found google to be more useful than other search engines no matter what I search for. I like the fact that they have an uncle sam section of it for researching tools, it automatically filters out personal sites and random things that has nothing to do with the search. Go google!
Posted by Tao on October 29, 2004 11:46 AMWhen I searched under google for the Atkins diet it gave me websites that started with "Atkins diet" as the first few words of the site name. With the library's index the search results i got had atkins diet in the middle or somewhere within the article. The Internet Public Library reminds me of the database that we used in the UT library search. All seem effective.
I would prefer to use either google, or the LII. I really didn't like the Internet Public Library because the results do not give an overview of what the site contains. Both google and LII give a summary of what the site contains. That is much better because i can just read and pick the site that seems to have the information that i need.
Posted by Eduardo Arcos on October 29, 2004 12:05 PM