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Find Internet Resources on Your Topic

Online Library Home > Help Doing Research > 6 Steps to Research

Benefits of using the Internet
The Web has a lot of good information, especially:

government data
company data
travel information
news and current events
opinion
information put up by non-profit organizations, museums, research institutes, etc.
online-only journals, books, podcasts, videos, etc.

Some of this information isn't available anywhere else.

Challenges of using the Internet

Most information on the Web is not peer reviewed or quality controlled.
There is no comprehensive index or catalog, no one place where all information on the Web is gathered together and organized.

However, there are some tools for finding and evaluating information on the Web.

Subject Directories
Subject directories are categorized lists of web sites. Librarians, subject experts, or other individuals hand-pick websites for inclusion and organize them by topic.

Subject directories created by academic libraries or professors are a great source for research because an expert in the field has already done some of the quality control for you. The Online Library maintains a collection of Research Guides.

Search Engines
Search engines are tools that allow you to find websites that contain the keywords you search for. Remember that not all search engines search the same way, and no one search engine accesses the whole contents of the Web. Use two or more for the most thorough results!

Read the help pages and follow the suggestions for a successful search. To read about the most common search methods, and what search engines have them, consult the Search Engine Watch web site. You can also consult the Online Library's guide to Using the Internet.

Meta-Search Engines
It is important to use more than one search engine. A short-cut is to use a meta-search engine like MetaCrawler or Dogpile. These tools bring up the top hits from a number of different search engines, eliminate duplicates, and organize them logically in a single list.



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