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Subject Guides
Subject
guides are very well-organized indexes to topics of interest on the
Internet. You can search subject guides by typing a keyword(s) into a
search field, The guide will then give you dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of
pages that deal with your topic. Unlike search engines, however, subject
guides do not search the entire Internet for pages dealing with a
particular subject; rather, they display URLs that have been registered
and categorized for easy searching. For this reason, subject guides are
both much more organized - and much less comprehensive - than search
engines.
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Search Engines
Search engines are guides to the entire Internet. When you type a keyword
or phrase into a search engine, it searches for any page on the Internet
that deals with your topic. Different search engines, however, search for
different things: some search only in page titles, some search in special
commands called "meta" commands that page users create specifically for
use by the search engines, and some search through all of the text on an
entire page.
You should keep two things in mind when using a search engine: 1) Because
of the different ways that various engines perform searches, you should
not rely exclusively on any one service; 2) A search that is too general
will often produce more information than you can handle, so try to narrow
your topic as much as possible before submitting it.
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Meta Search Engines
Meta search engines are search tools that allow you to look through
numerous search engines at once. Meta search engines perform "power
searches" that actually send your information to five, ten, or even more
of the common search engines and then display it for you in one easy
operation. The advantage to these power searches is that you can search
the Internet in a number of different ways with a single query. The
disadvantage is that your searches will often return thousands of URLs at
once, giving you more information than you can process in a short period
of time, most of which will be of very little use.
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Research Sites
The research sites listed below are all
well-organized compilation of Internet resources. Unlike search engines,
which retrieve any information that happens to be on the web, these sites
are maintained by educators and librarians who read and evaluate every
page that they link to. These sites tend to be very well organized into
traditional academic categories (literature, psychology, philosophy,
etc.), and they almost always present the best information on a topic that
the Internet has to offer. Some of these sites have begun to experiment
with "real language" searching: you type in a question such as, "who is
the President of Bulgaria?" and an internal search engine displays the
sites where you are likely to find an answer.
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Library Sites
Most college and university libraries now
have all of their holdings on the Internet. Online catalogs are very
useful to students because, once you locate a book, journal, or other
source at another library, you can use our own Interlibrary Loan to
request and borrow it. The first site listed below is a comprehensive
guide to university libraries throughout the country. The rest are links
to specific libraries that are close to Shepherdstown and a few more that
are big enough to have anything you may be looking for. Some of these
sites, such as the Maryland Library Consortium and the Washington Research
Library Consortium, contain links to a number of college and university
libraries that have agreed to put all of their holdings on a single
catalog. You may also find it helpful to access materials at local public
libraries.
Shepherd University Library (note that the Shepherd Library page
allows you to link to LexisNexis Academic, EbscoHost, Expanded
Academic ASAP, Gale Literature Resource Center, and a number of other
online databases)
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Government Documents
Government documents provide a wealth of information for both historical
research projects as well as investigations related to current issues.
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Online Reference
Like any good library, the Internet contains a wealth of reference tools
that can be used to look up facts quickly and reliably. Below is a
collection of encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and almanacs that can
be accessed online.
Information Please: Dictionary, Encyclopedia, Atlas, & Almanac
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