From Chabot College Library, these sites not
only list library subscription databases by subject, but also lead to web sites,
evaluated and selected by librarians at Chabot College.
Search tools designed by
librarians, academics and other experts who evaluate quality sites and then
provide annotations describing the sites' quality and what they are about.
The tricky part for searchers is that they have to begin searching by broad
topics, first.
Of the most common domains, .gov, .edu, and
.org are usually least likely to be sites that are selling information or are
buried with ads. While you still need to evaluate a site effectively and
watch out for personal web pages, sites that do not provide much information, or
be exposed to very biased web sites, these search tools can help you focus on
your search.
With so many search engines,
many now owned by the same companies, you may often be led to information that
is "sold by the highest bidder" (Overture.com). This class focuses on only
three of the general search engines and directories. In addition to the
more well-known Google, we will also take a look at Teoma, considered
to be the most current "up and coming" of the search tools, since 2000,
and Open Directory, which in the spirit of Yahoo! makes an effort to index the
Web (Yahoo! is no longer studied as much in this class due to its now paid for
inclusion practices).
This page leads to a large
selection of search tools of the World Wide Web. "Academic Searching" is
where you want to go to find quality sites and where you most often need to
enter broad subject terms. "General Searching" are the general search
engines where you most often need to enter more specific terms and to always be
prepared to evaluate web sites effectively.
If you are doing research online, you are
usually better off trying to find originally published materials from print
sources, first. Many are available online, but not always from free
publicly accessible web sites. However, as a student you do have access to
Chabot College's subscription databases. All are available on campus.
Most available off campus.
As you are residing
here in California, you also have access to databases from Alameda County
Library. You must first obtain an Alameda Library card and then you have
access to more databases, using the Alameda .
