Open searches

The Internet is a superb brainstorming tool. Say, to continue our example, that you think you might want to write about capital punishment for a course in American politics or philosophy or criminal justice. But at the moment, that's all you know—you're no expert on the topic, you're not sure about the status of the law in the U.S. （is capital punishment a federal issue? A state issue? Both?） or what other countries do. You don't know much, if anything, about the history of capital punishment; nor are you up on recent controversies—though you do recall hearing something about recent brouhahas in Illinois and Texas, you think.

　　The Internet can take your vague interest in a topic and, after a couple of hours of searching and reading, give you a thorough grounding and a dozen avenues for further exploration. That's one of the most amazing things about it—it offers instant crash courses in anything you want to learn about, from t = 0 to right this instant.

　　There's no single "best" search tool. First of all, none of them covers the whole web or anything close to it. The web is constantly changing, and web pages come and go faster than the speediest search engine can track the changes （resulting in the beloved 404 error when a search engine tries to direct you to a page that's disappeared）. No search engine, even the biggies like Alta Vista and Google, manage to track more than maybe a tenth or so of the ever-growing number of web pages in existence. Still, 10% of one billion or so web pages will produce a lot of hits.

　　Second, before launching into a brainstorming search, you should know something about how different kinds of search tools work. There are two main kinds: search engines and subject directories. Search engines, like the term implies, are mindless robots that crawl endlessly through the Internet, filing away information about every page they come across, including the page's full text. But search engines aren't really meant to organize the data for you. You'd like some information on capital punishment? A search engine will give you a truckload. You're looking for the complete text of Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 Supreme Court decision that declared the death penalty unconstitutional? A search engine will give it to you fast. But if you're not sure exactly what you're looking for—say you just want to find a high-quality site from a reputable source as a gateway to learning about the topic—well, good luck sorting through all 73,309 pages.

　　By contrast, subject directories like Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project （which search engines like Alta Vista and AOLsearch partner with） are like vast libraries that have been organized just for you. They compile information into categories—not automatically by robots, but thanks to the labors of armies of unsung and underpaid （or unpaid） editors. Yahoo!, for instance, organizes its contents into fourteen main categories （Arts & Humanities, Business & Economy, Computers & Internet, Education, etc.）, and then breaks these down further. Things get listed wherever Yahoo!'s subject editors feel they fit. Subject directories don't try to present exhaustive guides to the Internet—just to the best sites for each category. Nor do subject directories index complete sites. Thus a subject directory is not a good choice if you want to find sites that include particular text, like a particular court case or a name or a date. But subject directories offer something very useful for scholarly research: summaries and annotations that make it easier to decide whether a particular site is worth a visit. A subject directory like Yahoo! is the best quick way to find high-quality sites on a given topic （for instance, try searching Yahoo! for "essay writing help"）.

　　If search engines are the Internet's muscle cars, bristling with raw speed, subject directories are its minivans—not as much horsepower but better for running many research errands. The best search strategy is to be familiar with both kinds of search tools and use them in tandem.

Recommended search engines and subject directories

　　Search engines （best for exhaustive searching for particular data like names, terms, and text）

　　Google （http://google.com）

　　Alta Vista （http://www.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&what=web）

　　Northern Light （http://www.northernlight.com/）

　　Infoseek （http://www.infoseek.com/）

　　FastSearch （http://www.alltheweb.com/）

　　Subject directories （best for exploring particular subjects in depth and finding high-quality sites）

　　Librarians' Index （http://www.lii.org）

　　Infomine （http://infomine.ucr.edu）

　　Britannica Web's Best （http://www.britannica.com/）

　　Yahoo! （http://www.yahoo.com/）

　　Galaxy （http://galaxy.com）

　　（This list is from the UC Berkeley Teaching Library Internet Tutorial. The latest version, plus links to the rest of the tutorial, can be found at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/ToolsTables.html. The Berkeley guide provides a great deal of additional information on each of the sites listed above, including combining searches, advanced search strategies, and using meta-search engines.）

　　Choosing a search engine or subject directory is just the first step in conducting an open search. Learning how to use these tools is even more important. For instance most basic search engines like Alta Vista and Google recognize such symbols as +, -, and quotation marks （which denote phrases） to help make searches more precise: If you want to search, for instance, for the phrases "Supreme Court" and "capital punishment" you'd enter this: +"Supreme Court" +"capital punishment."

　　But I recommend moving a step further, to learning how to conduct boolean searches. A boolean search, in which you can use logical connectors to craft complex search statements, allows you to conduct finely tuned searches that eliminate a lot of noise. It's not particularly difficult after a few minutes of study. Here are some quick tips for Alta Vista Advanced Search （http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&stype=stext）. Besides boolean searching, Advanced Search lets you decide what sorting criteria results are returned for you. This is a very powerful feature; it's another way to increase the chances that you'll find what you're looking for.

Quick tips for Alta Vista Advanced Search and other boolean searches

　　●Boolean searches like Advanced Search assume that multiple-word entries like capital punishment are phrases unless you specify otherwise. Thus with this search term Advanced Search would not return pages with capital or punishment, only those with the whole phrase.

　　●Use lower case to snag both upper and lower case; use upper case to exclude lower case.

　　●Use the boolean connectors AND, OR, and AND NOT to winnow results.

　　●Use AND （symbol equivalent &） to narrow searches: Supreme Court & capital punishment will return documents with both phrases.

　　●Use OR （symbol equivalent |） to get either term. This is useful for synonyms: capital punishment OR death penalty.

　　●Use AND NOT （symbol equivalent !） to exclude a term: capital punishment !catholic.

　　●Use the NEAR command （symbol equivalent ~） to find terms that occur within ten words of each other. This is a great way to search for names: Franklin ~Roosevelt will find documents containing Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Franklin, and so on.

　　●Use parentheses to order searches: Supreme Court AND （capital punishment OR death penalty） AND （Burger NEAR Warren） and （opinion OR decision） does a pretty good job of zeroing in on Supreme Court capital punishment decisions issued during the tenure of Chief Justice Warren Burger.

　　●Use wildcards to search for variants: constitution* will return constitutional as well as constitution.

　　●Use like:URLtext to find pages similar to the specified URL. For example, like:http://www.france.com finds lots more France-related pages. Useful when you find a site on a topic you're interested in, and want to do more browsing.

　　●Use the Sort command to tell Advanced Search how to arrange results.

　　●For more info, and for instruction on how to sort results with Advanced Search, consult the help page （http://doc.altavista.com/help/search/adv_help.html）. Alta Vista also has a printable cheat sheet （http://doc.altavista.com/adv_search/syntax.html） to help you with advanced searching.

　　All this can help you narrow down searches. But there comes a time in all serious scholarly research when you need to move from public databases to professionally maintained collections. That's the time for closed searches.