Internet Research

Working With Words Speech 11/20/1999

This week has been insane! I've had hardly any time to prepare my speech. (Run around handing out papers to everyone.) It's all this internet research! The internet is this mythic place where people think they can find any information. It's like the Library of Alexandria! At the time of the Library of Alexandria, the Dewey Decimal System hadn't been invented yet, and do you think the Library of Alexandria was alphabetized? Probably not. The system hasn't been invented yet that can organize the internet. So how does anyone find what they want?

I try to find good card catalogs. On the internet, they're called Directories and Search Engines. Directories arrange the best books, called "websites" on the internet, by category, listing websites in alphabetical order. If the information that you want is defined by one of their categories or sub-categories, directories like Yahoo, Open Directory, 4Anything, and About.com are the best way to go. That's not me. Directories almost never help.

If I want more specific information, search engines are better. They try to list as much information on the internet as possible. They don't just list books, they try to index every page of every book in the library. Then, they display the information most closely matching the words you chose to search for at the top of the list. The best search engines include Alta Vista, Infoseek, Hot Bot, and Excite. But indexing every page in every book of even a small library is next to impossible. They can't really know everything, and sometimes the pages they do index don't contain much useful information. Sometimes they can't find what I'm looking for, either.

I could try one of the "librarians" of the internet. You can find them at Ask Jeeves and Looksmart Live, ready to answer your specific questions when the search engines are not enough. The problem is, you have to wait for their answer, probably at least a day, if not a week or more. I'm too impatient to wait for them.

Another thing I've tried is just browsing the internet. If the internet were a library, all the books would be set on bookshelves, stacked on tables, and strewn across the floor in no apparent order. Upon closer inspection, you may find that books on the shelves are arranged by author or alphabetically by title. Those websites are in internet directories. Books on tables are often one person's favorites, or stacked by topic, left by some previous researcher. Those websites are in "favorites," "links," or "other resources" lists on other websites. The websites on the floor aren't listed anywhere.

To see what's on the floor, I start typing. At the top of your browser, there's a little box for a website's address. When you click on a link, the address is automatically loaded, but you can type in an address yourself as well. Type www.whatever.com, and see what happens. (If you are looking for information on a particular company, this process works especially well.) You may not find what you are looking for, but you may find a related website.

If you do find a good related website, you might just find the right little stack of books left on the table. Their list of related resources is more valuable than search engines or directories. They are pre-screened by someone in the field who has already found the information there valuable.

Browsing in the library is the hardest way to find what you want, and so is browsing the internet. If you're as frustrated as I am, there is a little program called a "bot." These programs have artificial intelligence, to sort through websites looking for specific information you ask it for. These bots can look for any information you want, learning more about what you want as they search. Then, they report what they found back to you. I used to think these programs were available only to advanced internet users, who could write one themselves or pay someone else to, but they're actually offered for free via the internet. Just go to BotSpot to adopt one yourself.

Even after you've found the perfect page, with all the information you could ask for, one little phrase can frustrate even the most experienced internet researcher: "404 Error! Page not found." Most people decide that's the end of it and head back to the search engines, but if that information is important to me, I don't give up so easily. I delete the parts of the address after each "/" (starting from the last one) until I find information I can use to find the page I want, or an email address I can complain to.

Having an internet connection in your home can be like having instant access to the Library of Alexandria. You just need to know how to navigate it in order to find valuable information, software, and music 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Internet Resources (handout)

Directories

Search Engines

Internet "Librarians"

Bots

Glossary of Internet Terms and Abbreviations

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Dawn Gray
Email me at dawn gray at earthlink.net
© November 1999

last updated January 11, 2000