Participant Resources: Using the WWW for Research

What is the World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web (WWW) is an international network of information servers which include text information, graphics, audio and video clips. The information from these servers is interconnected using hypertext which allow the reader to move from source to source with the click of a mouse.

How do I access the Web?

To access the World Wide Web, you will need a computer connected to the Internet and a piece of software called a web browser. Examples of this software include Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mosaic and Lynx. The web browser runs locally on your computer and connects to the information server you specify to collect information and display it on your screen.

What is a URL?

A URL, or Universal Resource Locator, is the address of a web page. This address tells your web browser what server to connect to and what page to access on that server. The addresses generally take the form of http://www.server.domain.extension. This address also provides you with some general information about where the information you are accessing is located. There are several valid extensions. URLs ending in .com are commercial sites. Those ending in .edu are educational institutions. Those ending in .net are generally network providers. Those ending in .gov are U.S. government institutions, and those ending in .org are nonprofit institutions. In addition to these endings, two letter country codes are also used to identify the country in which the server is located (such as .ca for Canada). This two letter extension is often left off of U.S. servers.  (A list of country codes and other extensions is available here.)

Searching the WWW

The World Wide Web is a huge, anarchic mass of information. To aid you in your search for information, several search engines and web directories are available. 

In general, search engines use automated "robots" to seek out and categorize web sites.  When you conduct a search, the engine matches your request with the entries in its database.  Differences in perfomance among the various search engines depend upon how extensive its database is, how often it is updated, and how it decides which entries are the most relevant.  Web directories differ from search engines in that the information is gathered and categorized by humans, either by submission from web page authors or by searches conducted by experts in the field.

Many search engines now have commercial partners and are paired with other functions on "portal sites", which provide web directories and access to services like news, stock quotes, and shopping.  The Kansas City Public Library has published a good review of several of the most widely-used search engines.  For help in learning how best to construct your web searches, see Rice University's Internet Searching Strategies or Web Tools' Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet. 

The ICONS Research Library has a collection of search engines and web directories, but you might want to start with the following:

Yahoo ( www.yahoo.com)
Yahoo is a great place to start your research. Although Yahoo will allow you to search its database, it is probably most useful as a menu based catalog of WWW sites. Click on any of Yahoo’s headings to request a page with links and more specific headings related to that area. It will give you a quick picture of the types of information available in your area of interest and contains links to a wealth of information. If you do not find what you are looking for, conduct a more specific search using Web Crawler or AltaVista.

Web Crawler ( www.webcrawler.com)
Web Crawler is allows you to search either WWW page titles or summaries. To select which you want to search, click on the down arrow next to the titles box. You can also set the number of results you want returned. The default is 25, which is usually a good number to work with. To enter your search, click in the box next to the search button. Type the search words. If you are looking for a phrase that contains more than one word, such as "human rights", enclose it in quotes. Web Crawler assumes that you are looking for pages that include all of the words (an "and" search). If you are look for pages that contain any of your words, then separate them with OR. You can eliminate pages with words that are not of interest to you by typing not before the word. For example to search for international security or military policy in Israel but not for nuclear weapons, you would type: Israel "international security" or "military security" not "nuclear weapons".

AltaVista (www.altavista.digital.com)
To search with AltaVista, click in the box next to the Submit Button. Now, type in the words for your search. If you are using a phrase with more than one word, such as "human rights", enclose it in quotes. If there is a word that you want to make sure appears in any document AltaVista finds then place a + in front of it. If you want to make sure that a word does not appear in any of the documents, place a - in front of it. For example, +"military policy" +Israel - "nuclear weapons" "United Nations", will result in list of documents which contain the words Israel and military policy but not the nuclear weapons. The first of these documents will contain the words United Nations, while farther down in the list, there will be the documents that are about Israel and military policy, but not necessarily the United Nations.

Evaluating WWW Resources

The World Wide Web is not an encyclopedia. There is no centralized authority which evaluates the accuracy of information published to the web. Some WWW pages are produced by experts and contain accurate and up-to-date information. Other pages are produced by individuals or organizations with biases, and the information may be slanted or inaccurate. It is important to carefully evaluate the quality of the information being presented.

The most important elements to consider when evaluating a WWW page is the authority of the author. The WWW page should explicitly state who is providing the information, their affiliation, qualifications and the date of creation of modification. If there is no ownership information for a URL, it can be found by conducting a search at http://www.inet.net/cgi-bin/whoisgw. This will return the name and the address of the domain name owner, who could then be contacted for more information. This search works at the domain name level, so in your search, you should include only the domain name and extension of the URL. Another measure of authority of a WWW site is how many other pages reference the page. This can be assessed using AltaVista. Searching for link:URl will return a list of pages linking to the URL. For example, to see how many other pages link to the ICONS homepage, one would search for: link:http://www.icons.umd.edu.

Citing On-line Resources

The following sites provide information on how to cite WWW resources in scholarly works:

http://www.inform.umd.edu/LibInfo/cite
http://www.uvm.edu/~ncrane/estyles
http://www.nrlssc.navy.mil/meta/bibliography.html

One example of citing a WWW page is:

Author’s Last Name, First Name. Name of Article at Cite. http://URL (day month, year).

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