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To find up-to-the-minute information about search engines, where should I look? For the latest information about search engines, visit Open Directory--Computers: Internet: WWW: Searching the Web. This site publishes detailed reviews of new search engines, sources of discussions on engines, locations of tutorials, a long list of specialized engines, and a list of newsletters about search engines and related developments. 
How thoroughly can I expect a search engine that indexes texts to scan the World Wide Web for sources? Don't expect any one search engine to give you every Web source on a given topic. As whatis.com explains: Most if not all of the major search engines attempt to index a representative portion of the entire content of the World Wide Web, using various criteria for determining which are the most important sites to crawl and index. Most search engines also accept submissions from Web site owners. Once a site's pages have been indexed, the search engine will return periodically to the site to update the index. Some search engines give special weighting to: words in the title, in subject descriptions and keywords listed in html meta tags, to the first words on a page, and to the frequent recurrence (up to a limit) of a word on a page. (from the whatis.com entry for search engine) Moreover, because each search engine uses a somewhat different indexing and retrieval scheme--often treated as proprietary information--and because each search engine can change its search protocols at any time, it is not possible to guarantee that any one search engine will scan the Web with 100 percent coverage. For these reasons, it is always best to use several search engines in order to get a comprehensive selection of hits.
What's so special about Internet sources?
For students and researchers, the most inviting feature of the Internet is its immediacy. Sources can be retrieved instantly, at any time, at any location, and they may include up-to-the-minute news. Ways to search for information are similarly fast and readily available, and they usually provide direct links to sources for immediate display on your computer screen. But the immediacy of interactive communication on the Internet presents serious problems for research: documents can be changed by their authors at any instant without leaving any traces of editing, and they can be moved to another electronic address without notice. We have coined the term invisible revisability to capture these features of Internet publication.
Doesn't "invisible revisability" mean that Internet sources are unreliable? My instructor won't let students use anything from the Web! First, let's separate the reliability of the information people deliver over the Internet from the reliability of finding a document again. What's published on the Internet is as varied as what is published in any other medium, and users have to employ good sense (see the next question) to identify reputable sources. Internet information can be secure and reliable; if it couldn't be, Internet businesses wouldn't survive! If you know how to identify trustworthy Internet sources, you can use them in your writing with as much faith as you place in other published materials. But the potential for invisible revisability creates difficulties for effective writing about Internet sources because writers (usually) want to know that the information they use will stay put, ready for inspection by them or others should questions arise. Many researchers have adopted the practice of citing both a document's URL and the date on which they accessed it (see Chapters 5–8 of Online!). Many researchers also keep a printed copy of at least the first page of each useful Internet source. The printing capabilities of most Web browsers make it easy to record the URL and the access date automatically. Reporting where a document was located on a certain date does not guarantee that the document will not be revised or moved, but it does lend credibility to the work of the writer citing the document.
How can I judge which Internet sources contain reliable information? In Chapter 4 of Online! we describe several effective strategies for (1) accurately reporting the authorship and title of an Internet source, and (2) evaluating the reliability of information you find. For more help, see the FAQ entries for Chapter 4. As you encounter useful-looking information on the Internet, ask yourself who the author is and how credible the information is likely to be. One simple strategy that's often overlooked: many Internet authors provide easy access to their email addresses and will respond readily to questions from readers.
Internet sources don't have page numbers! How do I cite them in my writing, where I use page references such as "(13)" or "(Brown, 13)" for all my other sources? Page numbers are generally meaningless for Web documents because the size of a document's display or printout depends on your browser's settings. Often you can use a Web document's internal headings in place of page numbers. In other cases you can use a main-entry reference, as you would for a one-page printed document. In each citation style chapter of Online! (Chapters 5–8) you'll find advice for doing this effectively.
I know I have to cite Internet sources I'm using, but my style manual isn't one of the ones covered in Chapters 5-8 of Online! What format should I use? Take a look at Appendix A of Online!, "Using Other Styles to Cite and Document Sources." It contains advice on adapting discipline-specific styles for print sources to properly cite online sources. After providing numerous suggestions in that appendix, we conclude with this summary:
In general, a citation of an Internet source should include at least the following information (the arrangement of which may differ from style to style):
I'm especially interested in locating book reviews. Where can I get good, up-to-date reviews of books? For starters, we recommend that you visit BookReviews.Net. There you'll find a number of links to book reviews, including information on children's books, classic literature, and best-sellers, and to book review newsgroups. Last revised February 15, 2000
Copyright © 2000 by
Bedford / St. Martin's
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