Web Search Center

Prepare for Internet Searching

Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial
Collection of resources based on workshops offered by the Teaching Library at UC-Berkely. Introduction to the Web and Netscape - plus detailed guides to search tools & strategies and a glossary of Internet terms. Powerpoint presentation.

ICYouSee Guide to the World Wide Web
Instruction in Web searching organized by seven basic questions: What Can You Do on the WWW? How Can You Find Anything? What Went Wrong? Is the WWW a Good Research Tool? What Do They Mean by That? (a glossary) - and more.

Learn the Net: An Internet Guide & Tutorial
Available in English, French, Italian, German & Spanish. Includes Internet Basics (background & history), World Wide Web (how the Web works, anatomy of a Web page, searching the Web, Top Ten Tips), and Digging for Data (search tools, advanced search techniques, evaluation).

Search Engine Watch
Links to pages showing how search engines are performing - reviews and comparison charts. (See also Search Engine Listing for links to search engines from around the world.)

Subject Guides & Directories

Digital Librarian: Librarian's Choice of Best of t
Alphabetical listing of links to resources in nearly 100 topic areas, both scholarly and popular. Brief annotations. Features Google Image Search - over 150 million images.

Federal Web Locator
Searchable index to U.S. government resources from the Center for Information Law and Policy. "Federal Government information at your fingertips"

Great Sites for Kids
Directory of 700+ annotated links from the American Library Association: Literature & Language, People Past & Present, Planet Earth & Beyond, Science & Technology, and Arts & Entertainment. Also features sites for parents, teachers, and librarians.

Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections
Comprehensive collection of Internet resources arranged in ten broad topical sections for faculty and students at the university level. Contains annotated links to 20,000+ resources. Features multi-search options. University of California, Riverside.

Internet Public Library
Collections include Reference (all subject areas), Exhibits, Magazines & Serials, Newspapers, Online Texts, Web Searching - plus Teen & Youth collections. Browse and keyword searching - annotated links.

Internet Scout
Features the Scout Report, weekly guide to new Internet resources; Scout Report Signpost, searchable archive; and Scout Toolkit, variety of searching aids & guides. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Librarians' Index to the Internet
Guide to resources selected by California librarians for their usefulness to public library users, but with much to offer the academic community. Search or browse annotated links in over 40 major subject categories.

Library of Congress
Open-door to the nation's library. Features American Memory, historical collections for the National Digital Library (44 collections with over 1 million items online); Exhibitions, the online gallery; Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet; the Copyright Office; guide to the Library; and much more.

WWW Virtual Library
Oldest catalog of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the Web). Subject specialists based at academic institutions world-wide provide pages of key links. Includes many strong collections.

Yahoo!
Largest subject collection on the Internet. Yahoo! does not review sites & descriptions are very brief - but recognized for its search capabilities and comprehensive collection of sites. (see also Yahooligans! - the Web guide for kids.)

Search Engines

AltaVista
"AltaVista's strength is its advanced search capabilities: For sheer power and flexibility, you can't beat it. Unfortunately, AltaVista's content isn't fresh enough to make it a first-choice search engine." PC Magazine, November 15, 2000 (ZDNet Reviews)

Excite
"Excite.com falls squarely in the middle of the search-engine pack. It's a perfectly adequate search engine and Web directory, but it lacks the uncanny accuracy of Google! and the power of Northern Light. With a Web database of 250 million pages, it's also quite a bit smaller than many of its competitors." PC Magazine, November 15, 2000 (ZDNet Reviews)

Google
"Powered by an intelligent spider that ranks the relative importance of sites as it discovers them, Google is an almost frighteningly accurate search engine. It consistently yields high-quality, highly relevant results." PC Magazine, January 2, 2001

HotBot
"For complex, carefully targeted Web searches... one of the more accommodating search engines. HotBot provides an impressive number of ways to specify what you seek and where to find it. The engine's strengths lie with its advanced search and personalizing options." PC Magazine, November 15, 2000 (ZDNet Reviews)

Lycos
"Lycos's main strength is its depth of search results, which include the four most popular Web sites, determined by user-selection traffic and listed before other Web hits. Results may also yield links to related searches, news articles, or shopping sites." PC Magazine, November 15, 2000 (ZDNet Reviews)

Northern Light
"A tremendously powerful search engine with unparalleled capabilities and resources, Northern Light claims to have indexed about 300 million Web pages. The site's most obvious strength is its ability to sort your search results into thematic folders, making sense out of hundreds or thousands of results, and helping you focus your search." Computer Shopper, October 23, 2000 (ZDNet Reviews) 

Metasearch

Metacrawler
"METACRAWLER, our favorite metasearcher, draws on solid search sites such as AltaVista and Google, which helps it bring back plentiful and pertinent results." PC World, September 2000

Specialized Search Tools

BigBook
Comprehensive business information derived from over 5,000 yellow pages directories from U.S. cities - plus maps and driving directions.

Telephone Directories on the Web
Detailed index of online phone books, with links to yellow pages, white pages, business directories, e-mail addresses and fax listings from around the world.

Evaluate Web Resources

Evaluating Web Resources

Evaluation checklists for all kinds of Web pages (advocacy, business/marketing, news, informational, & personal). Features PowerPoint presentation, bibliography of Web evaluation techniques, and links to additional Web evaluation sites. New module: Advertising and Sponsorship on the Web.

Can You Trust the Web? An Exercise in Sleuthing

Online interactive exercise with printable form plus recommended questions and techniques for evaluating Web pages. Teaching Library Internet Workshops UC- Berkeley.

How to Evaluate the Sources You Find

Guidance for all areas of scholarly evaluation: How to Critically Analyze Information Sources, Distinguishing Scholarly from Non-Scholarly Periodicals: A Checklist of Criteria, Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Sites (table of suggestions), and Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools.

Evaluation of Information Sources

Bibliography especially designed for teachers & others selecting sites for information guides or advising users on criteria for evaluating Web resources. This page is part of the Information Quality offerings from the WWW Virtual Library.

Cite Internet Resources

Chicago Manual of Style and Turabian

Called Citing Electronic Information in History Papers, this is an up-to-date, detailed guide. Includes a bibliography with links to additional sites for the various style manuals.

MLA Style

Guidelines on MLA documentation style for WWW authorized by the Modern Language Association of America (MLA). Click on MLA Style, go to Frequently Asked Questions, see #4 for Web resources.

Consider Internet Issues

Censorship

Includes definitions of important terms, background information, news stories, case studies, and voices for/against censorship.

Copyright & Fair Use

Divided into four main categories: Primary Materials, Current Legislation (including Fair Use and Multimedia), Resources on the Internet, and Overview of Copyright Law. Browse or search. Sponsored by Stanford University Libraries, FindLaw Internet Legal Resources, and the Council on Library Resources.