[Author: Bhupinder S. Sran, (bsran@admin.nj.devry.edu), DeVry Institute, North Brunswick, NJ. This document is meant to be used for personal, or educational, non-profit purposes only.]

What is the World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web is a collection of millions of linked hypertext documents stored on thousands of servers on the Internet.

What is available through the World Wide Web?

Hypertext documents

Text documents

Multimedia (sound and images)

Software

Methods for finding documents on the Web

Browsing.

Using directories of the web.
- Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com
- Scott Yanoff's list of internet connections - http://www.spectracom.com/islist/
Following links from some favorite sites.
- Point Survey Top Sites - http://point.lycos.com
- The WebCrawler Top 25 - http://webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/Top25.html
- DeVry Institute's "Favorite Sites" - http://www.nj.devry.edu/intsites.htm

Keyword Searching with Web Search Engines

	Alta Vista - http://www.altavista.digital.com/ - "The Largest Web Index." Search the Web and Usenet news.
	InfoSeek - http://www2.infoseek.com/ - Search by keyword and phrases. Rated the best in several reviews.
	Lycos - http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/ - Search by keyword. Catalog covers "over 90%" of the web. Very thorough.
	WebCrawler - http://webcrawler.com/ - Search by keyword/phrases in document title and content. Pretty fast.
	Excite - http://www.excite.com - Search by keywords and "concepts".

Asking others users via Listservs (ex. Best-of-Web Listserv)

Getting URL's from publications and colleagues.

How to find the search engines

If you are using Netscape, click the Net Search button; or

Type in the URL of search engine into your browser; or

Go to pages that have lists of search engines

Search.Com - http://www.search.com
DeVry Institute's Search Tools Page - http://www.nj.devry.edu/search.htm
NetScape's List of Search Engines - http://home.netscape.com/home/internet-directory.html

Main Components of Automated Web Search Tools

Spider (or Robot) - programs that search the Web everyday, creating a catalog of documents.

Catalog - a database of information about Web documents that have been visited by the spiders.

Search Engine - a program that takes a user query and matches it against the catalog and displays information about the "relevant" documents to the user.

General Search Strategies

Understand the characteristics of each search tool

Learn and use the search language of the search tool

Web directories: Best for searching the "top" of the Web.

With Yahoo, select the proper category before doing the search.

Automated search engines (e.g. Lycos, InfoSeek, Alta Vista, WebCrawler): Best for finding documents on unusual topics.

Use discriminating terms in your query to reduce the number of matches. Avoid one word queries.