WH, Web Searches info

HELPFUL HINTS FOR SEARCHING THE WEB:

Academic Search Engines:

Power Library can be accessed from any computer in school. This is a super resource. You can search a particularly good magazine for articles on a specific topic. For example, having trouble finding information from people other than the Chinese on their space mission? In the box, plug in the years you want to search in The Economist, specifically.

Proquest
History Study Center
A collection of primary and secondary sources on global history from ancient times to the present day. Contents include reference books, essays, journal articles, historical newspaper and magazine articles, maps, rare books, government documents, transcripts of historical speeches, images and video clips. Study Units offer editorially selected material on over 500 historical topics.

Learning Literature
A comprehensive resource including 3,000+ author biographies; 40 searchable full-text literature journals; full-text literary works; and other key criticism and reference sources.

Opposing Viewpoints
Gathers essays, statistics, articles, and primary source documents supporting opposing sides of topics. Great resource for debate research.

Newsbank
NewsBank World Wide provides access to current and archived content from more than 2,000 newspaper titles, as well as newswires, transcripts, business journals, periodicals, government documents and other publications. Included also is America's News Magazines, providing access to popular journals in the areas of news, sports, entertainment and lifestyle. Current Events and Special Reports gather articles on issues such as the environment, global terrorism, and world economics.

Nettrekker : Nettrekker is an academic search engine with over 160,000 teacher-reviewed websites. When you arrive at this site you have to create a "NEW USER ACCOUNT" by typing in a USER NAME and PASSWORD. It will also ask you for an IU KEYWORD which is EAGLES. When you get to the " Welcome to Nettrekker Page" you can do a keyword search. If you are having problems setting up you account check out more detailed instructions at http://www.phila.k12.pa.us/offices/ptrn_nettrekker_info.html

Free Library of Philadelphia: On the home page, in the blue box labeled FIND look for the word Databases and click
Enter your search term and scroll through the resources, clicking those you want
The Gov't. Documents and Magazines and Newspapers bring up the best sources.
This process will get you into many of the data bases available in the library.
You will need to enter your library card # and pin to open the found documents.

More general search engines:
To use search engines well, be as specific as you can with your question, using Boolean terms, of full sentences

http://scholar.google.com/

www.google.com
Particularly good if you know what you are looking for. By using good search terms and Boolean terms, you can narrow responses quickly.Tag “news” to cut out games, and “images” to get pictures.

www.google.com/help/features.html
Helps you understand what google can do, with a more sophisticated search, using Boolean terms

www.google.com/help/interpret.html
Helps you interpret your results

www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html
Helps you refine your search

www.teoma.com
Excellent, particularly when you’re not sure what you’re looking for. The clusters of “Refine Your Search” and “Resources” are very useful.

www.altavista.com
Altavista often covers a broader slice of the Web than Google. Tools such as link: and host: make altavista powerful. They enable you to search for information only within a particular department of the government, for example.

www.alltheweb.com -A good all around search engine which usefully clusters devices. The standout feature on alltheweb is the url investigator which gives the owner, external links, and archived views of the site, helping to gain critical information about your website: Type the url of the site you’re checking, and press return. It takes you to a page that shows external links to the site, who owns the site, and what it used to look like.

www.dogpile.com
Combines a lot of other search engines. Good if you know what you are looking for more specific websites that produce a great deal of good information:

www.NYTIMES.com

www.PBS.org

www.nationalgeographic.com

www.Economist.com :Most Magazines have search engines, and charge money for full text.

www.Library.phila.gov The country links below are more specific in nature and may be valuable if your project deals with one of these areas.