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?

Cons:

—

Pros:

— Far too much retrieved — Easy — — — — Very fast Huge scope Sophisticated search algorithms — — 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

what – no list ‘deep web’ content – but we don’t know • 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

( ( http://academic.live.com/ ) • 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 web sites as well as journal articles and allows export to Endnote etc.

http://www.scopus.com

which searches • Some subject-specific databases are adding similar web searching capabilities, but most don’t

• • • • • •

Academic subject gateways

Often better than general search engines: Link to evaluated resources Focused on specific subject areas Up-to-date Variety of information and services provided Ability to customise 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 • • 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

Alta Vista http://www.altavista.com/

Second generation

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/

Scirus

http://www.scirus.com

Chemie.DE

http://www.chemie.de/

Biolinks

http://www.biolinks.com/

Medical Matrix

http://www.medmatrix.org/

Health on the Net

http://www.hon.ch/

Medical World Search

http://www.mwsearch.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: • Vivisimo http://vivisimo.com/ • Clusty http://clusty.com/ • Ixquik http://www.ixquick.com/ • Ithaci http://www.ithaki.net/indexu.htm

Features 1

keyword text-searching women Buddhism (concepts)

women woman female feminist 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

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

•

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

• 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 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 Syndication) works see http://news.bbc.co.uk/ • For a ‘layman’s description’ of how RSS (= Really Simple 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 • 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

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!

Conclusion

•

Maintain a balanced diet!

• Five a day… • Google, Scholar, Intute, subject-specific database, RSS…