Finding Information on the Internet

Source

This tutorial presents the substance of the web searching workshop (current schedule) offered by the Teaching Library at the University of California at Berkeley. We call the workshop "Research-quality Web Searching" to reflect our belief that there is a lot of great material on the Web - primary sources, specialized directories and databases, statistical information, educational sites on many levels, policy, opinion of all kinds, and so much more - and tools for finding it are steadily improving.

Recommended Search Strategy: Analyze Your Topic & Search With Peripheral Vision

Search Tools:

• Search Engines - Comparison table of recommended search engines; how search engines work
• Subject Directories - Table comparing some of the best human-selected collections of web pages
• Meta-Search Engines - Use at your own risk: not recommended as a substitute for directly using search engines
• Invisible Web - What it is, how to find it, and its inherent ambiguity (searchable databases on the Web)

Evaluating Web Pages: Why and How and evaluation checklist forms (PDFs)

Style Sheets for Citing Resources (Print & Electronic) (MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian)

Glossary of Internet & Web Jargon

Handouts and PowerPoints used in our Current Classes
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As part of the Know Your Library Workshops series, we offer a session titled "Research-quality Web Searching: Google and Beyond," which covers:

• Making your Google searches more precise and focusing on academic information.
• Using other search tools and new technologies to improve your results.

Evaluating what you find for research quality.

Current versions (Spring 2009)

• Google and Beyond slides (PPT)
• Google and Beyond handout (RTF)
• Web Page Evaluation Checklist (RTF)

Previous versions (not updated)

• Googling to the Max (PPT)
• Beyond Google: Other Search Engines, Directories, and Evaluation of Web Pages (PPT)
• Googling to the Max: Hands-on Exercises (PDF)
• Table comparing Google Books and Google Scholar (PDF)
• Beyond Google: Hands-on Exercises (PDF)
• Evaluation of Web Pages Worksheets (PDF)
  • Version used in classes
  • Generalized version adaptable to other topics
  • Shorter checklist version