Lesson 9 Contents:

Learning Objectives

I. The Internet and the World Wide Web: A Brief Overview
* What is the Internet?
* What is the World Wide Web?
* Browsers and URL’s

II. The Strengths and Limitations of the Internet
* Partners not Competitors: Libraries and the Internet

III. Finding Information on the Internet

IV. General Web Surfing: Using Web Search Tools
* Subject Directories
* Search Engines
* Common Features of Web Search Engines

V. Key Points to Remember

Lesson Nine Quiz

Lesson Nine Exercise

There are 3 basic tools for searching the Internet:

• Web databases (thousands of indexes and catalogs of various sorts)
  
• subject directories (Yahoo!, Excite, etc.)
  
• search engines (Google, AskJeeves, etc.)

  (Subject directories and search engines are often referred to together as Web search tools.)

The best way to find high quality information is to use one or more Web databases, as you have already been doing in this course. Recall from Lesson 5 your use of the PLS online book catalog, and from Lessons 4 and 7 your use of the InfoTrac OneFile periodical index. Both of these can be classified as Web databases.

Most people, however, make the unfortunate mistake of doing their research using only Web search tools (such as Yahoo!, etc.). This approach is unwise for three reasons:

1. As the graphic below illustrates, Web search tools can only access that part of the Internet sometimes called the “Visible” Web. The Visible Web contains free information of varying quality and is only a small part of the total information available on the Internet. Only Web databases can access the wealth of high quality information found in the largest portion of the Internet, known as the “Invisible” Web. (It’s called the invisible Web because it contains information “invisible” to search engines and subject directories.)

2. Much of the information retrieved from the “visible” web is not high quality information in terms of credibility and objectivity. Why is this the case? As you already know, no central authority or editor checks the quality of information put on Web pages. Therefore, free information on the Web may often:

• be inaccurate
• be poorly written
• represent an extremist or unorthodox viewpoint
• be subtly (or explicitly) trying to advertise a product or service, or
• be incomplete, misleading, or confusing.

3. The best information on the Web is found most of the time by using Web databases rather than Web search tools. Thousands of these specialized databases exist on the Internet -- some are free, and some are by paid subscription only. (Fee-based databases are called proprietary databases or premium Web databases). Corporations, government agencies, non-profit groups, scholarly and professional groups, and many others create and maintain them. Listed below are a few examples of Web databases. Notice that some are free and some are not.

* Periodical databases
-- InfoTrac OneFile, ProQuest, SIRS, Lexis-Nexis, and others (proprietary)
-- ERIC (abstracts only – education journals) (free)
-- PubMed (abstracts only – medical journals) (free)

* OPAC’s
-- PLS Online Catalog (PLS Library System) (free)
-- Socrates (Stanford catalog) (free)
-- Investigator (SFSU catalog) (free)

* Government databases
-- US Census (free)
-- California Legal Codes (free)
-- Thomas (federal legislative information) (free)

* Media databases
-- Associated Press Photo Archive (proprietary)
-- National Public Radio Audio Database (free)

* Databases from non-profit and scholarly organizations
-- American Society of Microbiology Journals (proprietary)
-- PsychInfo (abstracts only – psychology journals pub by APA) (proprietary)
-- Public Policy Institute of California (free)

Proprietary Web databases are especially valuable in research because they consist primarily of articles written by journalists, scholars, or other experts. The articles have been selected and approved by publishers or editorial boards. In this course, you have already used a proprietary database – the InfoTrac OneFile. You are allowed access to it because the PLS Library system and this college district pay for the subscription.

It is important to understand that articles available through proprietary databases are not freely available on the Web because they were originally published in print editions of commercial periodicals. These publications make money by selling copies and they own the copyright (legal rights) to all their articles. Database producers pay for the right to include these articles in their database and, in turn, they charge subscribers for the privilege of accessing their database. Libraries are willing to pay these fees because of the high quality information these articles provide. Many people do not realize that Web search tools cannot “reach” inside these databases -- such as the InfoTrac OneFile -- and pull out the high-quality articles stored there.