Web Search Engines
The best introduction to Internet searching is InterLinks, a family of linked engines developed by Florida psychology professor Rob Kagan (check his name). This gets used by over 60,000 people a month. It has been designed to lead novice searchers into web searching easily.
 The web, with its ability to use server-programmed forms packages--has several complex search engines. These search the whole web, according to keywords you input. The databases for these engines are updated in 2 ways: (1)WebMistresses tell the engines about their pages, and provide keywords if the engine permits this. (2) Robots called web crawlers or spiders (free-ranging programs) travel around the web, noting new pages and reporting them to the engines' indexes. In that case, their indexing is done entirely by titles authors give their pages. Info-Seek is one of those net information search engines--this one not free, but you get 100 free shots at it to try it out. It's much more flexible and intelligent than others--freebies like ARCHIE (for downloadables at FTP sites) and VERONICA (gopher sites). You can input words or phrases called a query that get at the meaning (or title) of what you're looking for, then you get a prioritized list of what the engine thinks is most relevant of the fulltext docs it found within the InfoSeek corporation's database. You can download your selection of its hits or found docs. Time-Warner Interactive also has a search engine on its Pathfinder server. This is limited to searching Time-Warner's own databases, and for non-Pathfinder subscribers there are other limits. But its main advantage is an on-line tutorial which lets you explore a lot of fairly detailed commands and forms of searchlogic, so you can learn to refine searches. Eventually something like this professional engine will probably be made available all over the web.
Warner PLServer Search --Trying to find Indians, I found books where they got mentioned once, and finally a murder mystery called RedBird featuring a Cherokee woman detective. In exploring this engine, be sure to practice with the variety of tools and read the HELP instructions
--InfoSeek Home Page --Try any topic. You'll get up to 20 "hits"--documents that contain the phrases of logical combo you're looking for. Be sure to read the HELP instructions and rpactice with the tools. Learning searching is the point of these 2 non-free engines, which provide sone limited accesses to non-subscribers..These engines are free. Whether you can find something or not dependes on how pages' authors characterized or titled them, what keywords were assigned to them, and how efficient the crawler or spider robots were in tracing them down. --Yahoo - Native Americans This starts you on an Indian search path. Explore it a lot, learn how to pull in what's out there on the Web pertaining to American Indians, Native Americans, and any tribe you care to try. Go to the TOP to begin a broader search on other topics.DejaNews Research Service --Deja News is a search engine that searches large archives of newsgroup news postings. It ginds only material contained in one of the archives it targets -- not the latest, but from a week to months past. USENET newsgroups are not "news" as normally conceived. Anybody can post pretty much anything, so there are opinions, factoids, falsehoods, flames, as well as announcements, carefully researched material, and substantial news stories, often forwarded from small press services. You use keyword searching (and a few other clickable criteria) to define your target. The result is a list, which usually contains many irrelevancies, but usually some hits. Point Communications --Point Communications maintains an interesting database of what its Webmasters consider the "top 5% of all web sites." (this would actually number more than 600,000 sites at today's count). They have a number of categories, and they give short "reviews" of each of their site picks. Hey, they must be good! They found obscure me, running on an obscure server! More to the point, I've found many interesting sites through their indexes, some of which are linked on my GAMES and EDUTAINMENTS page. Point is no good for focussed research; it's for exploratory browsing with a guide showing you some gems they found. I found the Model Forest network -- backbone of my First Nations Forests page -- through their pick of the Vancouver Island site.Subject-Matter CatalogsUsing these is more like looking up some subject in an encyclopedia. You have to know how what you're looking for was categorized by the encyclopediasts--what volume, what section, what topic-name. You find the categories in an outline of ever-increasing detail (called a tree structure). These catalog databases are maintained by a referee or many moderators--you can propose inclusion of your own web pages for inclusion. --The WWW Virtual Library at CERN. A hierarchy (outline) of general and ever-more specific subject categories leads to catalogs of pages on each subject maintained by many specialists all over the world. Grandad of net info catalogs.--The Whole Internet Catalog by Global InterNet Navigator. Hierarchical subject-matter catalog of pages, where you can perhaps find what you're looking for if you know how its subject-matter has been categorized.The Internet Sleuth --Super-searcher! Once you learn the methods and capabilities of the major web engines, here is the whole array of most of them, in click-start tabular form. |
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CREDITS: Those are my eyeballs, scanned from my driver's license, greatly magnified, punched up with a sphere plug-in, specular reflection of a window drawn, and lots of good detail lost to JPEG compresssion here. The spiral-palmed hand is a traditional Indian design used by many different tribes. Its origin may have been Anasazi people of the southwest, who left an abandoned civilization in the desert when the rains stopped. There are spiral sunclocks found carved into rock walls there.
Last updated: Saturday, January 27, 1996 - 7:23:25 AM
