Befriending the Internet
Excerpted from The Curious Researcher, 3rd edition by Bruce Ballenger
Online Version
November 14, 1999
The Internet is an information resource that acts like I did when I was thirteen--at times it's forthcoming, amiable, and responsible, and at other times, rebellious,disorganized, and unreliable. Despite this schizophrenic character--or perhaps because of it--the Net can inspire among its users an obsessive relationship that rivals anything you experienced in the eighth grade: the Internet can drive you crazy yet you can't seem to get enough of it. I have frequently seen my students spend hours browsing the net for information, wandering from one end of cyberspace to the other, when they could walk across the quad to the library and find what they needed in less than thirty minutes.
Three Drawbacks of Internet Research
For all the its promise as an information source for the researcher--and the Internet's potential is really quite stunning--know that, for now at least, its drawbacks are worth considering. Let me mention a few:
- Information on the Internet is disorganized. While search tools like Alta Vista and Yahoo, and indexes like the Virtual Library are beginning to fence off some cyberspace and organizing some of the information that rushes helter-skelter into that virtual village commons every day, there is no limited set of comprehensive reference sources. That means you cannot be certain that a single search, using one of the many so-called "search engines" like Yahoo, will ever offer adequate coverage on what might be available on your topic. To research effectively on the Internet, then, you have to be extra resourceful. You have to learn how to launch multiple searches that will explore as much of that commons as possible.
- Information on the Internet is unreliable. The free-for-all atmosphere of the internet makes it a surprisingly democratic forum for ideas, debate, and dialogue. I find that enormously appealing as a participant, but as a researcher the openness of the Internet makes me nervous.How reliable is the information I find there? Will it still be there tomorrow?And how can I establish the authority of Internet sources, especially since so much information is authored anonymously? For the moment, the Internet is not nearly as good a source for scholarly information as the library."Peer-reviewed" journals, publications that will only print an article after it is scrutinized by other experts in the discipline, are the most authoritative sources for college research papers, and very few of these journals are available online, though more do appear every day. And some information on the Internet is downright wacky. While there is useful material to be found online, the researcher must, as Ernest Hemingway put it somewhat more graphically, always keep her crap-detector on.
- It's easy to go nowhere very slowly. Navigating the Internet can be like driving in Boston: you're constantly confronted by no street signs and complex intersections that always seem to end up in a rotary.In fact, moving around in cyberspace looking for information is a lot like that,tentatively trying one street, then returning to try another--moving forward,then back, then forward, then back--until you find your way to a useful destination. Then there are the breakdowns. Servers--the software that makes information available to other computers on the Net--are sometimes fickle things. They can crash most inconveniently.
Internet forays require patience, and if you're easily discouraged, online research may drive you batty. To avoid that, do what I did in Boston: first learn to drive to Fenway Park without getting lost. There are a number of Internet sites that are fairly easy to find and frequently rewarding for college researchers. Many of them are listed in The Curious Researcher.Learn to find and use these sites first, then when you're more confident you can try to find the Internet equivalent of the underground parking garage atthe Boston Commons.
Three Reasons To Use the Internet for Research
Now that I've sobered you up about the drawbacks of online research,consider its unique advantages.
- The Internet is marvelous source for topical information.Want to read the March 23 New York Times article on the relationship between writing and Alzheimer's? Check the New York Times Online. Want to read the text of the President's most recent speech on funding student loans for higher education? Search Fedworld's Web site for an FTP file of Clinton speeches. If it's current information you're after, the Internet offers fast access to it through online newspaper and periodicals, commercial information services, and government sources. And it's a particularly good resource for timely information on things to do with computer technology and the Internet.
- The Internet is most useful when you're after something specific. Say you want some information on how the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina breaks down according to religious affiliation. Or perhaps you need an electronic version of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Or you're interested in getting more information from the organization Alcoholic's Anonymous. It's likely that you will find all of this kind of specificin formation much more quickly on the Net than at the library. If you're not exactly sure what you're looking for, or have only a broad notion of what it might be, the Internet can be a swamp. That's why so-called "keyword"searches, if they're carefully expressed, can produce useful information much more quickly than broader subject searches. (As you'll see, working your way through a subject search can be quite useful. But you can't be in a hurry).
- Online documents can be easy to transport.Downloading files or printing documents from the Net is easy, particularly with the new "browsers" like Netscape. And once downloaded into your computer or onto a floppy disk they are in electronic form that--if you writeon a computer--makes the information easy to move into your own document.Suppose you need a passage from Huck Finn, or a quote from President Clinton's latest speech on health care, or a table on drug use among high school students. Using the edit-and-move or cut-and-paste features of your wordprocessing program you can "drop" the passages or tables into your paper (assuming the texts are compatible or can be converted by your program).The ease of transporting online documents, though, should make you extra vigilant about avoiding plagiarism. Carefully cite and attribute any material in your own paper that is not your own.
A Cluttered and Colorful Canvas
At the risk of cluttering discussion of cyberspace with one more metaphor,I'd like you to imagine a bad imitation of Jackson Pollack, the paint splatter artist. Since the sixties, when the Internet was first developed by the U.S.military, people and institutions have been throwing wet paint at what was once the large blank canvas of cyberspace, creating runny, amoeba-like blobs of color that each represent separate, though often overlapping information resources.
While this chaos of color may seem impenetrable to the novice, the veteran Internet researcher learns to understand the meaning of each color and how she can reach it. Thankfully, the Web--that large splash of color in the middle of the canvas--offers beginners fairly easy access to many parts of the painting,and it is the Web that will be vehicle for the quick tour that follows.
The Tangled Web
The World Wide Web began in 1989 when some European researchers saw the needf or a tool that could access the range of documents, databases, and media on the Internet using a consistent interface. In the years that followed, a number of so-called "browsers" were developed for this purpose which often used graphics instead of text-based commands to search for and retrieve information. The most famous of these is called Mosaic, but in the past several years Netscape has assumed a dominant position as the most popular WWW browser on college campuses. I'll often use Netscape as an example.
The stunning growth of the World Wide Web in the last few years is partly due to how easy it is to navigate cyberspace using browsers like Netscape,and also the ease of moving between documents and Internet sites using something called hypertext. Most Web documents you retrieve ares prinkled with terms, phrases, or titles that are highlighted in a different color. This highlighted text--or hotspots--provides links toother documents, media, or locations on the Internet that are related to the original document's subject. And best of all, these links are only a mouse-click away. Essentially, then, you can visit a Web site and from that one location wander in multiple directions to explore other leads that may seem promising. From a single Web site you can reach into the edges of themulti-colored canvas of cyberspace.
Using a Browser
Before your journey into cyberspace, know the vehicle that you're driving.The WWW browser is your navigation tool, and while it's fairly easy to use,there are several key things you should know how to do before you start. The great majority of campus networks use Netscape (see Figure 1-6), but ifyou're working from home, you probably have access to a browser from commercial networks like America Online, Prodigy, or some local provider. These don't differ too much, and they have several key features in common. Use the "help"feature on your browser and familiarize yourself with how it works, but pay special attention to the following:
The "favorites" or bookmark. Want to have a really bad day? Try to find your way back to a Web site that was really important to your research when you either didn't write down the Internet"address" of the document or didn't store it in your bookmarks. Browsers all have an easy way to save the addresses of useful sites during your visit through such bookmarks. The feature usually involves simply clicking on the favorites or bookmark button, and agreeing to save the document title and Internet address on your personal list of important Internet locations. This is one of the Web browser's most valuable features. Use it regularly. If you're using a school computer, however, you may not be able to use the bookmark function for personal use. In that case, you'll have to carefully write down addresses of important Web sites. Fortunately, most browsers also automatically record where you've been during a given session. This is a feature that you can find under the Window/Window history option of Netscape (see Figure 1-6).Other browsers also list all the sites you've visited during a session when you click a button next to the address window. Therefore, even if you forget to write down an important address while you're at the site, its location should be preserved in these temporary records of your Internet travels.
The forward and back buttons. You'll use these buttons more than any other. Like I said before, moving in the Web is a lot like driving in Boston. You keep leaving a rotary to explore some other part of town, then return to the rotary to try another street leading to another part of town. As you move through the Web you will often click on hypertext links that lead to other links, but then you'll want to retrace your steps to get back to the original site. These two buttons will get you back and forth.
The title and address window. Key information resides here that you'll need not only to find the location again but to cite it in your essay if you use the information there. A Web address will have something called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). It will look something like this,
http://www.boisestate.edu/writing
http stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. A standard Web protocol.
www Stands for World Wide Web. This isn't always included.
boisestate.edu is the name of the host computer or the domain name. This is important to note.
/writingis the pathname. Sometimes you can figure out what these mean simply from the URL. Any guesses here?
Web addresses remind me of the way my 5-year old daughter Julia is learning to write. A sentence or a phrase is one interminably long word; vowels make an appearance only now and then. But I've learned to read Julia's sentences, and I've learned to read URLs by looking for places in the address that are significant. One such place is the domain (see Figure 1.X), which tells me whether the server that hosts the Web site is a commercial interest (.com), an educationali nstitution (.edu), a government (.gov), a nonprofit organization (.org), or a network administrative site (.net). This matters because it is the first hint about whether the information there might be more or less credible for academic research. (Commercial sites, for example, often represent a special interest,while those sponsored by educational institutions might feature credible scholarship).
The name of the host computer-- which usually appears first or second in a URL-- can also be revealing. In this case, I know right off that FedWorldprobably has something to do with the federal government, even without visiting the site.
All the information that follows the host name in an Internet address can tell me more about the page. In Figure 1.X, for example, I can infer that this particular site has information about the Supreme Court, and that the page-- index.htm--is probably (duh) an index to the contents of the site.
Learning how each element of a URL combines to make a Web address helps you to remember them later. Better yet, bookmark useful addresses, or write them down. To find the site again, you have to get as URL exactly right (even the U.S. Postal Service is more forgiving with addressing mistakes), including whether particular words are upper- or lower case.
There is a lot more you'll learn about your browser the more you use it, but with this limited knowledge you're ready for a quick research foray on the Internet.
EXERCISE 1-5: A Quick Tour of the Internet
Launching a Subject Search
Step One: Start Your Browser
If you're at a campus terminal, call up the browser on your school's network--probably Netscape or Internet Explorer. If you're at home, you may be able to call into the campus network using a modem in your computer, or you will likely have access to a commercial provider like Prodigy or America Online. Each offers its own Web browser. Get this up and running. Once you do,you're probably looking at the home page for your college or online service.
We'll begin with a subject search on your topic. This may seem an indirect way to find internet sources for your essay, particularly if you can immediately think of some specific keywords you could use, like "method acting" or "Al-Anon" or "television violence." But a subject search can sometimes produce resources that a keyword search will not.Let's try it.
Step Two: Using the Virtual Library
A great place to begin a subject search on your topic is to visit the WWW Virtual Library. This is essentially a catalogue of Internet resources organized by subject. To get to it, type the following URL in the address window of your browser: http://www.vlib.org
What you will now see is a long list of subjects, alphabetically arranged and highlighted. Each of these provides links to other documents and locations on each subject. Look for the subject category that best matches your topic and click on it with your mouse. For example, if my topic is "Method Acting," I will notice that there is a "Theater and Drama"category. Try several subjects if one doesn't work. Then follow the links that seem promising for your topic.
If you find a document, reference source, or site that seems useful, collect the following information about it:
Author (if any):
Title:
Publication name and date of print version (if any):
Online publication name or database (e.g. Boston Globe Online, Oxford Text Archives, Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, etc.):
Publication information of online version (volume or issue, date, page or paragraph numbers, or if none, n. pag.):
Date you accessed it (day month year):
Internet address:
Also make sure to add it to your "bookmarks."
Other subject search sites
There are several other servers that are useful for Web subject searches. Give these a try.
- http://www.einet.net/galaxy.html
Galaxy has a fairly elaborate subject hierarchy. Though not the largest,it's the oldest and possibly the most reliable guide to the Web. - http://www.yahoo.com/
Yahoo is one of the most popular search engines, offering both subject trees to follow or keyword searching. - http://www.clearinghouse.net/
The Argus Clearinghouse bills itself as a premier Internet resource for "Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides." Librarians are involved in this one.
Launching a Keyword Search
One of the great things about a subject search is that it often provides a context for the interesting documents you find; you can see a bunch of related sources, organizations, and sites. But sometimes you know exactly what you're looking for--the name of an organization, or title of a document, or series of words that nicely describes your topic. For example, Dave was writing a research essay on motorcycle helmet laws, a topic that didn't neatly fit under any one subject category. An Internet search using keywords like"motorcycle helmet laws," or any number of variations on this phrase,would seem more promising than a subject search.
There are a growing number of Web search engines that specialize in keyword searches. We'll preview just a few of the most popular and comprehensive here.But the success of your Internet search, like your search in the university library, is strongly related to how well you choose your search terms.
In the library you can consult the Library of Congress Subject Headingsvolumes to give you some guidance. The Internet provides no such standard for search terms. The key, then, is to have a range of alternative keywords to use in your search and to understand exactly how a particular search engine allows you to narrow your hunt.
Query, Query, Quite Contrary
While search engines may differ a bit in how they interpret keyword requests(something you should check on by clicking on the "help" button before you launch a search), most use something called "Boolean operators": AND, OR, NOT. These are the same operators you use when search a CD-ROM index at the library. In addition, a number of search engines have an additional feature: the ability to search using a phrase relevant to a topic.
Knowing your Boolean can make life easier. It makes your Web searching quicker and the "hits" a search generates more useful. Let's use Dave's motorcycle helmet law project to illustrate.
If I were to type motorcycle helmet laws in the search field of Webcrawler,a popular search engine, it would look for Web sources that include either motorcycle,helmet or laws in titles, URLs, and document contents. (The same thing, by the way, can be accomplished by typing an OR between each term. In this case, omitting an operator between terms implies the OR). This query will produce a long list of sources--I turned up 16,604--and most of them will not be what Dave wants. Suppose he retyped his request this way: motorcycle and helmet and laws. (You need not put the AND in caps). Then most search engines will only look for sources that include all of those terms,though not necessarily together in the same phrase. The list is shorter--27hits--and more useful. Another alternative is to use quotation marks--"motorcycle helmet laws"--which in most cases tells the search engine to only retrieve sources that include all three terms in the quoted phrase where they appear together. Such a "literal search" can bean enormously useful method for finding useful information quickly if your topic, like Dave's, is often described in a phrase.
Unfortunately, Webcrawler turned up only three hits on Dave's topic with a literal search, and none seemed that promising. The second approach--using AND to connect the terms--turned out best so far. Boolean operators can also be used together. For example, Dave could launch a search using these keywords: motorcycle and helmet and laws or legislation.
While AND, OR, or NOT are the usual Boolean operators, a number of popular search engines are now using the + sign, placed directly in front of a term. Like the Boolean AND, + signals that the term must be present in retrieved documents. The - sign, also placed before a word,would function as a NOT operator, indicating a term that must not be present in a document (e.g. +Olympics -Atlanta). Parentheses also frequently substitute for quotations marks in a literal search. Not using any of punctuation between terms usually indicates the same thing as OR in this scheme--any of the terms can be present. Using this system, then, Dave's search requests could be rewritten from motorcycle and helmet and laws to +motorcycle+helmet +laws, and "motorcycle helmet laws" to (motorcycle helmet laws).
Sometimes a search engine like MetaCrawler simplifies things by just asking whether you want search terms as a phrase, or all of the words, or any of the words. You just click on the answer without messing with Boolean operators.
There is more to know about Boolean searches, but those are the basics.Check your search engine help files for more advanced techniques.
Step 3: Compose Keyword Searches
Using what you've learned so far about how to compose a keyword search,write three different possible arrangements of terms or phrases that seems promising for a Web search on your topic. Consider promising synonyms or unusual terms that might help you narrow your search. And make sure you're spelling things correctly. You can fiddle with these later after you've tried them out;you'll likely get more ideas for searchable terms from the documents you scrounge up.
Step 4: Search on MetaCrawler
You're ready to search the Web. Where do you start? One good place to begin is with a so-called "metasearch." A single query on the search pageof a site like MetaCrawler will trigger a simultaneous search on nine or more individual search services, including Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Looks Smart, Lycos, Webcrawler, and Excite. MetaCrawler will return the top ten results from each service and even eliminate duplicates. This sounds a bit better than it really is, unfortunately. Metasearches (and MetaCrawler is just one of ten or so of this type of search service on the Net) may have breadth rather than depth.Because they skim off the top of the results produced by each individual search tool, you will not see the range of results you might if using a service like Yahoo!which has its own database.
The metasearch is, however, a good starting point for Internet research exactly because of its breadth-- you can quickly see the more popular sites on your topic, and the various contexts in which information about it might be found.
Use your browser to go to MetaCrawler's search page, which is located at the following address: http://www.go2net.com/search.html
Now launch keyword searches on your topic. Note that you may have to rewrite your terms a bit from Step 4 since MetaCrawler does not use the Boolean operators AND, OR, or NOT, but + (instead of AND), and - (rather than NOT). OR is implied when no syntax is used between terms. Parenthesesaround a phrase also substitute for quotation marks. Click on Metacrawler"Help" for more details.
Cindy, a nursing major, worked with elderly patients at a local facility.Her research topic was Alzheimer's disease. She wisely chose to narrow her MetaCrawler search to find documents on diagnosis of the illness. Her searchquery, then, looked like this: +diagnosis +Alzheimer's. Of the 20references returned, most were relevant, a highly successful search.
If MetaCrawler generated relevant hits on your topic, go to the most promising document and collect as much of the following information about it asyou can:
Author (if any)
Title
Publication name and date of print version (if any):
Name of database or online publication:
Online publication information (volume or issue, date, page or paragraph numbers, or if none, n. pag.):
Date of you accessed it (day month year):
Internet address:
Step 5: Using Single Search Engines
MetaCrawler and similar metasearch engines don't have their own databases.They essentially borrow the databases of the single search tools like Northern Light and Alta Vista, returning the top ten or so "hits" from each.This gives the illusion of coverage, but don't be fooled. You're looking at the proverbial iceberg tip. Perhaps the best Internet search strategy is to deploy two or more of the individual search engines, exploiting whenever possible the special query features of each. But how do you choose between, say, Yahoo! and Excite?
One way to choose a search engine is to compare the size of their databases.As of this writing, Northern Light is the current search engine leader in the number of pages it indexes-- about 160 million-- while Alta Vista is a close second. Don't be too impressed. While Northern Light has a massive database--and according to one study, the largest Web coverage-- it still only reaches 16% of the total pages indexed on the Web, barely edging Alta Vista's coverage of about 15.5%. Using both search engines, however, will likely increase that percentage, particularly if you customize your queries using the special features of each. Northern Light is a particularly attractive search engine for academic researchers because it indexes thousands of academic journals and sorts results into useful directories, including commercial sites,special collections, current news, and various relevant topical categories (see Figure 1.X).
Now try your search on both Northern Light and Alta Vista. Point your browser to each at the following addresses:
Launch a keyword search on your topic using the engine you selected, and jot down information on a promising document below. Remember to keep trying different queries if one doesn't produce useful sources.
Author (if any):
Title:
Publication name and date of print version (if any):
Online publication name or database:
Online publication information (volume or issue, date, page or paragraph numbers, or if none, n.pag.)
Date of access:
Internet address:
Links to the more popular search engines are everywhere on the Web. But if you want to go directly to the their home pages, use the addresses below. These search engines are listed from the most Web coverage to the least according to a recent study published in the journal Nature.
Now you've got a taste of the Web's possibilities. If you're already hooked, beware--don't give up on more conventional sources of information, especially library research. At the moment, the information resources on the Internet are simply insufficient, or sufficiently unreliable, to be an exclusive source for your essay. If you're frustrated, don't give up on the Net. It may yet transform how we find information.