The following tools are recommended are good starting points for beginners. A more extensive list of tools is available (see Web Searching Series).

Search Engines:

Alta Vista

http://av.com
Key points:

extremely large database

great power searching (if you know how)

supports natural language queries (example: "What does sleuthing mean?"

• Excite

http://www.excite.com
Key points:
• Concept searching
• Easy to use
• Hotbot

http://www.hotbot.com
Key points:
• Extremely large database
• Easy to use interface
• Great power searching template (no memorizing special commands!)
• accurate results (powered by Inktomi and Direct Hit)
• Lycos

http://www.lycos.com
Key points:
• Allows easy searching for special formats (such as images, sound files) and information of specific types, such as recipes, news, dictionaries (go to "Advanced Search")
• Northern Light

http://www.northernlight.com
Key points:
• Organizes results into useful groupings which called folders.
• Also indexes a "Special Collection" of professional journals which may be purchased for a modest cost. Recommended for professional research topics.
• The Search Page by Marcus Ziegler

http://www.accesscom.com/~ziegler/search.html
Key points:
• easy to use
• large, useful listing (220+ links) of specialty search engines with annotations

Subject Guides or Directories:

• Encyclopedia Britannica's Internet Guide

http://www.britannica.com/
Key points:
• rated guides in a range of subjects  (up to undergraduate level research)
• compiled by subject experts
• easy to use
• "More Search Options" allows users to limit to sites of a specified ranking
• Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections

http://lib-www.ucr.edu
Key points:
• searchable database intended for use by the academic community
• compiled by subject experts (librarians)
• contains cross-references to other resources (key words)

Multi-Search Engine:

Sends your query to several search engines at the same time and then organizes the results..
• MetaCrawler Searching

http://www.go2net.com/search.html
Key points:
• fast!
• easy to use; nice presentation of results
• sends search queries to several search engines including: Lycos, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Excite, Alta Vista and Yahoo, then normalizes and ranks results (also includes the Mining Company)
• of special interest:  Power Search allows user to limit by continents and by U.S. educational, commercial or government sites.

Searching for Images:

• Alta Vista (AV) Photo and Media Finder

http://image.altavista.com/cgi-bin/avncgi
Key points:
• search for images, audio and video clips
• large database
• "filtered" option
• search for "similar" images based on compostional elements (not very effective, but a worthy effort)
• Amazing Picture Machine

http://www.ncrtec.org/picture.htm
Key points:
• images suitable for  educational communties
• images are cataloged (that is, assigned key words and descriptions)
• Lycos Pictures and Sounds

http://www.lycos.com/picturethis/
Key points:
• easy to use
• browsable guide to images arranged by category
• "Kids Safe" search

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Angela Elkordy, Coordinator of Electronic Resources, The Sage Colleges Libraries
Last Updated: April 2, 1999
 elkora@sage.edu
http://www.angelfire.com/in/virtuallibrarian/basic.html

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