WISER Focus on
Subject Gateways and Web Services
for Research
An introduction to search engines (and the pros and cons of
Google), internet gateways, usenet groups and RSS feeds,
mailing lists and other electronic networking opportunities
Written by Roger Mills and Grazyna Cooper
Presented by Sue Bird
“One of the major issues academics will face
over the coming years
is how to utilise,
and teach students to utilise,
the Internet in their research”
Professor Dolowitz (2004)
Department of Politics, University of Liverpool
Well trodden paths…
“A high proportion of all staff interviewed tended to
rely on the same sources. Work is needed to
persuade people to look outside their "comfort
zone" for information in order to ensure they are
locating the best information for their purposes”.
“Big Blue” Final Report (2004), Manchester
Metropolitan University
The problem
…finding relevant, high quality, authoritative
information on the Internet
Using search engines
• Is Google enough?
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Pros:
Easy
Very fast
Huge scope
Sophisticated search
algorithms
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Cons:
Far too much retrieved
No evaluation
Does not search ‘deep’ web
– databases, priced content
etc
Search algorithms are secret
Can’t save or combine
searches
Google is not enough
• So Google have introduced Google Scholar
• http://scholar.google.com
• Searches some ‘deep web’ content – but we don’t know
what – no list
• Can be set up to link direct to locally-available full text
• Has new features – ‘cited by’ link, grouping of different
versions, web search, document delivery (BL Search)
• But algorithms are still secret
• As is frequency of update – slower than Google
Battle of the giants
• Microsoft has just entered the fray with
Windows Live Academic (http://academic.live.com/)
• Competing with Google Scholar
• Coverage currently limited to computer science, electrical
engineering and physics from scholarly societies
• Coverage list published http://academic.live.com/journals
Saving & refining searches
• Most general search engines don’t allow this
• Requires local software e.g. Blue Squirrel’s WebSeeker
- a meta-search engine which saves results to a local
database, allowing filtering, combining, e-mailing of results
etc
• Or use SCOPUS http://www.scopus.com which searches
web sites as well as journal articles and allows export to
Endnote etc.
• Some subject-specific databases are adding similar web
searching capabilities, but most don’t
Academic subject gateways
Often better than general search engines:
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Link to evaluated resources
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Focused on specific subject areas
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Up-to-date
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Variety of information and services provided
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Ability to customise
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Useful descriptions of resources
Resource Discovery Network
(RDN)
• JISC-funded: a free national service for the learning,
teaching and research community
• A collection of Internet resources
•
100,000 resources and rising
• Subject-specific services via hubs
• http://www.rdn.ox.ac.uk
8 Existing RDN hubs
• ALTIS - Hospitality, Sports, Tourism and Leisure
• Artifact - Arts and Creative Industries
• BIOME (Health (OMNI) and Life Sciences)
• EEVL (Engineering, Maths, Computing)
• GEsource - Geography and Environment
• HUMBUL (Language, Literature, Archaeology, Philosophy, History,
Theology, Classics)
• PSIgate (Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Earth Sciences)
• SOSIG (Politics, Law, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology,
Business, Economics, Anthropology, Geography etc)
becoming 4…
www.intute.ac.uk
Evaluate what
you find
Authority / Author / Source
Purpose / Audience
Coverage / Scope
Accuracy
Objectivity / Point of view
Currency
Design / Multimedia etc
Virtual Training Suite (VTS)
The RDN Virtual Training Suite teaches you how to use
the Internet more effectively via subject-based
tutorials. Forty tutorials are currently available, with
more coming along all the time….
Each tutorial has four sections:
• TOUR: take a ‘site-seeing’ tour of the Internet for your subject
• DISCOVER: how to improve your Internet search skills
• REVIEW: learn the skills needed to critically evaluate Web sites
• REFLECT: practical ideas for using the Internet to support learning
and teaching
http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/
Branch out!
• Searching the web is not research!
• Search Engines
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general (first and second generation)
•
subject specific
•
meta
•
country specific
• Invisible web resources
Search service limitations
• Indiscriminate: automatic search engines cannot judge the
quality or provenance of data
• The ‘Invisible Web’: millions of Internet resources cannot
be indexed by search engines
• Automated descriptions: these do not always convey what
one really wants to know about a site
• The result? Lack of precision in search
results…difficulty in identifying relevant, high quality
resources
The major players
First generation
Second generation
Alta Vista
http://www.altavista.com/
Google
http://www.google.co.uk/
Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com/
All the Web
http://www.alltheweb.com/
Wisenut
http://www.wisenut.com/
Subject specific search engines
FindLaw
http://www.findlaw.com/
Law Crawler
http://www.lawcrawler.com/
Law.com
http://www.law.com/
Medical Matrix
http://www.medmatrix.org/
Health on the Net
http://www.hon.ch/
Medical World Search
http://www.mwsearch.com/
Scirus
http://www.scirus.com
Chemie.DE
http://www.chemie.de/
Biolinks
http://www.biolinks.com/
DailyStocks.com
http://www.dailystocks.com/
TradingDay.com
http://tradingday.com/
Inomics (Economics)
http://www.inomics.com/
FMLX http://www.fmlx.com
The invisible web
• Direct Search
http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm
• Complete Planet
http://www.completeplanet.com/
To keep up with research on ‘deep web’ searching:
See Marcus P. Zillman’s blog ‘Deep Web Research’ on
http://deepwebresearch.blogspot.com/
Meta-search engines
• Dogpile
http://www.dogpile.com/
• Clustering tools: sub-group results by topic:
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Vivisimo http://vivisimo.com/
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Clusty http://clusty.com/
• Ixquik http://www.ixquick.com/
• Ithaci http://www.ithaki.net/indexu.htm
Features 1
keyword text-searching
women
women
woman
female
feminist
Buddhism
(concepts)
Buddhism
Buddhist
Buddha
India, Thailand, religion
phrase searching
“the role of women in Buddhism”
truncation/word stemming
wom* for woman, women, womb, womanhood, womanize, womankind, womanly, womenfolk,
womenkind
variant spelling
colo*r
concept searching
elderly for senior citizen and aged
Features 2
natural language queries
what is the weather in London?
boolean AND / OR / AND NOT
all of these words (AND) - any of these words (OR) - must not contain (NOT)
grouping words and phrases
kayak AND “Fiji Islands”
use of parentheses
(college OR university) AND “financial aid”
pollution AND NOT (air OR noise)
pseudo-boolean operators
+ or +anorexia -bulimia
+fairy +tales -grimm,
+”city guides” +Oxford
proximity ADJ / NEAR / BEFORE
Features 3
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field searching (date, title, url, image, audio, video, links, page
depth).
title:“New York Times”
image:butterflies
link:info.ox
domain:uk
host:www.hcu.ox.ac.uk
url:edu
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case sensitive:
“Emily Dickson”
Turkey v turkey
Polish v polish
More guidance
• Tool kit for the Expert Web Searcher
http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/litaresources/toolkitforexpert/toolkit
expert.htm
- A regularly updated evaluated list of various types of search
engine
Social or collaborative
technologies
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Mailing lists and usenet groups
RSS Feeds
Weblogs or Blogs
WIKIs
Mailing lists
• Discussion lists on Jiscmail http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ mainly for academic communities and most academic
subjects covered.
• Usenet news are mainly at http://groups.google.com
- millions of topics and it is searchable.
RSS feeds
• “Push technology” – an alerting service from web-sites you have
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selected
OUCS provides training in using and creating them – see
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxitems/presentations/
Hand-out available with lots of detail on finding RSS feeds at
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxitems/presentations/bytesize1/hando
ut.xml?style=printable
BBC news - good example http://news.bbc.co.uk/
For a ‘layman’s description’ of how RSS (= Really Simple
Syndication) works see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm
There are several icons that indicate newsfeed availablity
from a web site:
Keeping up
• Rather than keep visiting a long list of favourite sites, use
RSS newsfeeds where available
• When the site is updated, a link will appear in your RSS
reader or compatible web browser (not Internet Explorer
(yet), but Firefox, Mozilla, Opera work) – just click to see
the new content
• Some search sites (e.g. SCOPUS) allow you to create an
RSS feed based on results of your search, providing easy
current awareness
Weblogs or Blogs
• A web-site where journal entries are displayed in reverse
chronological order
• Can be used as a communication tool (eg during Iraq War)
• Weblogs feature – reflective tools, highlighting path of
progression of ideas, strengthening evaluative tools,
allowing community building
• Journals can have companion weblogs
• Might be useful for student portfolios?
• Eg Weblogs in higher education
http://www.mchron.net/site/edublog.php
WIKIs
• A WIKI is a web-site that allows you, or anyone else, to
add, modify or delete content easily.
• Classic example is the Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
• An Oxford example is
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/JISC_Digit
al_Repository_Wiki
Locating places / people
• Cutting-edge method! ASK!
• Contact – at Oxford
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http://www.ox.ac.uk/contact
• Go directly to the institution – Google “I am feeling lucky” or
just type directly your query in the navigation toolbar
• World-wide Universities email addresses
• JISCMAIL
Search tips
read search engine's help screens
use specialised resources first
don’t waste time!
use mirror sites
bookmark
remember cases
word order
check your spelling
use synonyms
URL’s are case sensitive
truncate URL
guess URL
Gullible's Travels
• “Our students love the net,
which is OK.
The problem is, they also trust it,
which is not”.
Block, M. (2004). Library Journal
Best strategy
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No searching service is perfect
Be knowledgeable about the types of subject-oriented tools.
Develop skills in using basic syntax, boolean operators etc.
Define what you seek!
state what you want to find in few sentences
select keywords, underline the main concepts
select synonyms and variant word forms
combine synonyms, keywords and variant word forms
Find resources on the Invisible Web
Be patient or get up early!
Experiment and be flexible!
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Conclusion
• Maintain a balanced diet!
• Five a day…
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Google, Scholar, Intute, subject-specific database,
RSS…