Claire Carpenter for CATalyst, May 14, 2001
Tips for faculty who want to guide their student toward effective Web searching
For Starters
Students should understand that the Internet, the World Wide Web, and Netscape
(or Internet Explorer) are all different.
Make sure your students are aware of the online help for their browser (under the HELP menu).
For basics, point students to one of the many Internet information sites available on the Web, such as the Living Internet at http://www.livinginternet.com/
Let your students get an overview of search tools via a site such as Berkeley tutorial Finding Information on the Internet at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html
To give your students an overview of Internet search tools & techniques, point them to the Sink or Swim site at http://www.okanagan.bc.ca/libr/connect96/search.htm
Are your students confused by all the terminology? boolean? relevancy? fuzzy? Refer them to the search engine glossary at http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/glossary.html In fact, this site, Search Engine Watch, is full of helpful tips and resources of all kinds for Internet searching. Check it out at http://searchenginewatch.com/
Encourage your students to think before they leap, to think out a search strategy before touching a keyboard. Take a look, for example, at this basic 4-point strategy at http://manta.colostate.edu/workshop/web/tools.html for using the different types of search tools in sequence. Another good resource is Web Search Strategies at http://home.sprintmail.com/~debflanagan/main.html
Help your students understand the distinguishing characteristics of the two types of search tools and when to use each:
This page at the Spider's Apprentice explains the difference and gives examples: http://www.monash.com/spidap1.html
Recommend subject directories such as Yahoo if you already know their usefulness for your subject area.
Search engines/Advanced Searching When your students use search engines, help them go beyond simple keyword searches and the frustration of getting overwhelmed by 200,000 hits. Encourage students to learn how to use special characters (+, -, *, quotes) and Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) by printing out and studying the help pages associated with any search engine they plan to use seriously.
There are great examples of advanced searches in various search engines in the long article "Advanced Searching: Tricks of the Trade" (probably too much for rank beginners) at http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/MayOL/zorn5.html
Many surfers now use Google (www.google.com) as their preferred search engine. Check out Google's very helpful Search tips (http://www.google.com/help/).
There are lots of other lesser known ways to search, beyond the commonly used search engines.
Go to the site of an organization that is known for its work in the field (United Nations, FBI, Library of Congress, American Heart Association) and use a local search option that indexes that particular site.
Investigate the resources of ARGUS Clearinghouse, which may have expert guides (link lists) related to your discipline that are very useful to your students: http://www.clearinghouse.net Also check out the expert guides at About.com at http://about.com/
Point your students to a "limited area search engine" if one exists in your academic area. See for example
Check out discipline- or area-specific resources such as
Encourage your students to be aware of Internet services other than WWW and the search tools available in relation to some of them. Newsgroups (also known as Usenet News) may be searched by DejaNews as well as by the Usenet option in Alta Vista and other search engines; FTP archives are searchable with Archie or via various software search sites on the Web; and Gopher files are searchable with the Gopher search tool known as Veronica.
If they are relevant to your discipline, point your students to the online databases which are increasingly available on the Web, such as the amazing Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) at http://www.askeric.org/ and Medline (ask a librarian about the three options via a UK Med Library page at http://www.uky.edu/MedicalCenter/MedLibrary/info_resources.html Check out Internet Grateful Med, Community of Science, and NOTIS for different interfaces).
Don't overlook the databases that cannot be accessed or indexed by the big search engines. Several sites try to provide links or search tools:
Point your students to "link lists" that make many of these services and search tools readily clickable, such as Beaucoup- 2000+ Search Engines, Indices and Directories
For off-beat or even mainstream topics, point your students to webrings, spontaneous groups of interconnected sites on almost any subject you can imagine. Start with WebRing at http://www.webring.org/
For a nice overview of multiple searching possibilities, see what the librarians at SUNY-Albany have put together: Conducting Research on the Internet at http://www.albany.edu/library/internet/research.html
More Ideas
When students hit a technical snag, direct them to the Information Systems Help Desk in 110 McVey Hall (phone 257-2249, e-mail helpdesk@pop.uky.edu); when they hit a Web searching impasse, they can of course always consult a librarian at the Young Library Reference Desk. Librarians are Web-savvy guides! Phone 257-0500 or send e-mail to refdesk@pop.uky.edu
You may request for your class a subject-specific orientation to the WWW and other online resources by a UK Librarian. Contact Roxanna Jones at 257-0500 x2109 or send her e-mail roxanna@pop.uky.edu If your students are enrolled as distance learning students, you may request the services of Distance Education Librarian Pat Wilson (606 257-0500 x2171 or pwilson@pop.uky.edu).
Forget the expensive books! If students take the time to read a few of the help pages, they really won't benefit that much more by buying a $25 or $30 book. On the other hand, if you want online exercises and related links, refer your students to the online book entitled The Research Paper and the World-Wide Web at this site: http://www.prenhall.com/~bookbind/pubbooks/rodrigues/
For thoughts on the changing nature of the college research paper and on collaborative research possibilities, check out a "page" in this same online book at http://www.prenhall.com/~bookbind/pubbooks/rodrigues/chapter1/destinations3/deluxe-content.html
Make sure your students know how to cite Web references and give proper attribution to their sources. Depending on the practices of your discipline, point students to one of the Citation Guides for Electronic Documents at http://www.ifla.org/I/training/citation/citing.htm
Help your students evaluate what they find by referring them to helpful checklists such as the site outlining five traditional Web Evaluation Criteria, Reviewed and Adapted for the Web at http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html
Have your students share useful resources they find by sending e-mail (individually or by listserv) messages to classmates, or by putting URLs they find on a course page you update periodically. They could also share bookmark files. Or, perhaps best of all, have them create Web pages as part of their individual or group assignments for your course. This Web resource can grow from semester to semester if you set up your course to evolve in this way.
Familiarize your students with Web site resources here at UK. Check out http://www.uky.edu/Subject/netics.html which is part of the WWW Resources gathered by UK librarian Rob Aken, and don't overlook the UK Writing Center homepage at http://www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/English/wc
Form a committee through your department or a national discipline-based association to rethink the curriculum and integrate information literacy. See the Educom article on "Information Literacy as a Liberal Art" at http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewarticles/31231.html
Please send corrections and suggestions to Claire Carpenter (claire@pop.uky.edu).
This page at URL: http://www.uky.edu/~claire/GuidingStudents.html was last updated May 14, 2001.