| Searches on the World Wide Web are conducted by powerful computer programs called search engines. Some of them also search through some of the databases listed Understanding Where the Information Is: Databases; others look only at Webpages (for titles and keywords) or at specific areas of the Internet. Not only are search engines fast, some of them are quite sophisticated in their methods-- for example, helping you to find other Websites similar to the one listed, or allowing you to pose a question, such as "Why are barns red?" (For the answer, check DejaNews.
No matter what program connects you to the Internet, you will be given a series of choices for searching the Internet. You can usually press Enter/Return or mouseclick on "search" at the top of your screen, but you may also be given a list of search engines to select from (such as Webcrawler, Excite, or Yahoo, or AltaVista). Any of these would be a good place to start (just click on the search engine's name), or you may prefer to type in the address of one of the search engines listed under Search Engines. (Note that some of the addresses provide connections to several search engines, and others (Metasearchers) search through a number of search engines simultaneously.) Try several different search engines, based on their descriptions. You might find enough information to digest right away. If you do, skim the articles quickly and save the useful ones to your disk. |
