Your Search Starts Here
The Blog is now Search Central - Start Your Web Searches Here! (Simply scroll down the left side of this page to "Search the Web" links.)
One of the most valuable aspects of the Internet is its ability to search for information on almost any subject from a vast library of web pages. Unfortunately, this ability is also accompanied by a great deal of frustration and lost time as we often find that our web search has not returned resources that are relevant to our topic. The fact that your search has uncovered 750,000 results is not comforting if the first 25 or so are not of help.
There are two keys to successful online searching. The first is to use a search engine that is not only most appropriate for the task, but presents its results in a manner you prefer. (Most of us tend to use the search function within our browser or continually use the same search engine such as Google). The second key is the way in which you word your search topic or question. This week on the Blog we will address both issues.
For now, if you scroll down the left side of the page you will notice a list of annotated links under a "Search the Web" heading. We've provided a list of some of the more popular and useful search engines. When you have a few minutes, experiment with three or four of these by submitting the same search topic to all. I used the "scholarship of teaching and learning" as my sample topic. Notice that there may not only be differences in your results, but variation in the way these results are displayed and organized. We'll discuss some of the differences between these search engines and provide tips to more successful searching during the coming week.
If you have any favorite search engines or helpful searching tips, feel free to comment below.