SEARCHING AND FINDING INFORMATION ONLINE (ch 6)
- name some search engines
- query: question you want an answer to or topic you search on
	- sample queries
- types of queries
	- book has 3 types
	- open-ended exploratory question (voyager): curious
		about something & want to see whats out there
	- deep-thought question: also open-ended but more
		focused (comes from meaning of life/42)
	- joe friday question (just the facts)
	- type of query determines what kind of internet
		resource you should use to find it
	- queries can change as you're searching (e.g., joe friday
		queries can become deep thought questions)

- subject tree: hierarchically organized directory
	of websites
- clearinghouse: collection of websites or online documents about a 
		specific topic.
	- if its a broad topic, it might be organized hierarchically,
		but a clearinghouse is still always more specific than a
		subject tree
- general search engine: indexes a large # of webpages via keywords
	- relies on automatic methods (spiders) to "crawl" the web
		in search of pages to add to the index
	- not restricted in topic
- specialized search engines: like a general search engine except
	limited to a specific topic.  Relies on people to handpick documents.

- subject trees/clearinghouses
	- really browsing aids, they require exploration
	- yahoo, about.com, open directory project (dmoz.org)
	- organize documents in a hierarchy of categories, although sometimes
		these categories aren't intuitive
	- larger subject trees are equipped with search engines to search the
		categories and sites for you: use a site search (restricted to 
		that main site)
	- so subject trees can have search engines
	- but search engines that have subject trees are different -- they search
		the whole web and might return documents not in their tree
	- category matches and site matches: categories are more important
	- browse through sites in each category: someone has already figured out
		what the best sites are for each category

	- about.com: each category in the subject tree is maintained by a human
		expert.
	- not as many pages as yahoo, but sites are hand-reviewed and policed
		for content, reliability, and accuracy
	- open directory project - started by lycos to compete with yahoo
		emphasizes practical know-how rather than academic expertise
		- uses volunteers who act as editors in specific categories
	- CLEARINGHOUSES: large collection of resources or documents on a specific
		topic.
	- some are maintained by researchers, some by the government, some by 
		private commercial organizations that charge $$, some compiled by
		librarians or teachers
	- environmental law net, infosyssec (computer security), webmd
	- find clearinghouses using a clearinghouse index (ipl.org)
	- very useful if you spend much of your time looking up information on
		one topic

general search engines/meta search engines
	- most common ones you've heard of, they use keywords
	- know how to use your search engine
		can use fancy queries to return pages that use all words, some words,
			wildcards, synonyms
	- never look beyond 20-30 hits
	- experiment with different keywords: successive query refinement
		- examine hits that come back, add or remove keywords to broaden
			 or narrow
	- meta search engines search many search engines at once,
		and return lists of hits from each one
	- they are careful not to swamp you with hits or duplicates of top sites
	- some will cluster the hits together into categories, which you then
		can filter 
query refinement
	- exact phrase matching - use quotes - might be case sensitive
		- especially useful with proper names, although have to watch out
			for middle initials, nicknames, etc
		- useful for a specific work that must contain a certain phrase
			such as a work of shakespeare, or song lyrics
	- title search: only searches keywords in the title of the page
		- sometimes have to experiment (zebras vs zebra)
	- wildcard matching *, ?, # (careful with short roots)
	- boolean queries AND OR NOT NEAR
		- (A & B) | C     vs      A & (B | C)
	- required and prohibited keywords (+, -)

specialized search engines
	- find them using search engines for search engines 
		(searchengineguide.com)
	- ex: find news (news.google.com) or pictures (images.google.com)
		local information, products 

assessing credibility on the web
	- anyone can put up anything they want on the web, true or false
	- evaluate the credibility of a site by its content, not its look
		and feel
	- a page is useless for research if it doesn't identify its author
		- look for a link to the authors homepage or for a short biography
		- check for .gov or .edu address, but then students have those too
	- verify the author is who they say they are (check main site)
	- accurate writing and documentation - spelling, grammar, where they
		got their info from
	- objectivity -- commercial company?
	- stability of webpages -- they change all the time, can disappear
		tomorrow.
		- include a date of update? last revised?
	- fradulent webpages (political candidates)