Mulford Health Science Library : Searching the Net

The Internet has been compared to a flea market: a lot of junk, a few cool things, and some real treasures. The problem is finding the worthwhile information while minimizing the amount of time spent sifting through the junk. The key tools in this process are Web directories, search engines, and metasearch tools.

Searching the Web [PDF]

Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial for Searching the Web - from the University of South Carolina

Searching the Web - from About.com

The key features of web directories are that (1) sites are organized into categories, so they are easy to browse, and (2) human beings look at the sites to determine if they are good and to decide the categories to place them. The sites listed below are general directories: they include sites on all kinds of topics.

About.com - directory of links for browsing and searching, combined with original content

Librarians' Index to the Internet - directory of links for browsing and searching

Open Directory Project - directory of links for browsing and searching

Yahoo! - directory of links for browsing and searching

These directories include sites that are strictly for health, medicine, biomedical research and education, health care, and wellness. Don't look for sports scores with these tools, but they are incredibly useful when looking for health information.

Hardin MD - directory of medical directories; from the University of Iowa

HealthWeb - primarily for professionals, some consumer health links; cooperative effort of academic health sciences librarians in the Midwest

MEDLINEplus - for consumers and patients; from the National Library of Medicine

MedWeb - for practitioners and consumers; from Emory University

Search engines are maintained by computer programs, with minimal human intervention. Search engines search a wider range of web sites than directories, but there are fewer quality-control mechanisms.

Altavista

AllTheWeb

Google - includes a directory and access to Usenet

Lycos

Metasearch tools search the other search tools...one-stop-searching the web.

Dogpile

Ixquick

Search Engine Show-Down - information on search engine features, technical analyses, search strategies, reviews, and more

Search Engine Watch - information for web searchers and web designers about how search engines work

Contact Mulford Reference Assistance at (419) 383-4218 or MulfordReference@utoledo.edu. Chat and IM reference is also available.