Welcome to the San Benito County Librarys

Helpful Web Search Tool Page

Here are some great tips and hints for

Internet Searching with Subject Trees.

Subject trees are alphabetically-organized lists of Web resources. They start with trunks of major headings, and branch off into subheadings and lists. Most subject trees depend on the work of volunteers, frequently academic or professional experts in their fields. The sites they link to are established, proven sites that usually don't disappear.

• BUBL Subject Tree. The Bulletin Board for Libraries (BUBL), put together and maintained by the Bath University in England

   

• Yahoo. Originally started by students at Stanford University, and now on its way to becoming a commercial site. A popular site with good subject categories.

   

• Yanoff's List of Internet Resources. Started by the famous Scott Yanoff, back in the dark ages of Internet. Grown now to a lengthy list of sites.

Internet Searching with Keywords and Terms

Search engines are automated programs (sometimes called spiders or robots) that crawl through the Web and find information containing your terms. Different search engines wander through different parts of the Internet and will come up with lists of different results using the same search terms. If you don't find what you want, try another search engine.

Search engines offer more options than simply following links in a subject tree. You can use boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to combine search terms, truncation to find everything containing a word root, and in many engines, you can force an exact match by using a period after the term.

• LYCOS. The big daddy of all the search engines, claims to search over 12 million websites, or 98% of the web. Click on Search Options for ways to refine your search:
  • Truncation -- Use $ (india$ will find india, indian, indiana)
  • Exact Match -- Use a period (india. searches just for that word)
  • Boolean operators -- Set the search operator you want (india AND astrology will find all records with both words; india OR astrology will find all records with either word -- many, many records and probably not what you want).

   

• Alta Vista. The newest search engine to come along, supposedly the fastest and widest-ranging. Lets you search the world wide web and also newsgroup postings. The advanced query page allows boolean and proximity searching.

   

• WebCrawler Searching. This search engine was started by a student at Washington University, and is now maintained by America Online. Searches are performed on the full text of documents. The default setting ALL means that records found should have all search terms (Boolean AND). You can change this setting to ANY, meaning that records found should have at least one of your search terms (Boolean OR). Search results consist of only a list of URLs, with no summary paragraph.

Virtual Reference Desks

Virtual reference desks are the librarians' attempts to organize the Internet. Several institutions have designed different pages to help you find the information you need. Follow them the same way you would a subject tree.

• Virtual Reference Desk from Purdue University in Indiana. This is a collection of ready-reference sources -- dictionaries, area codes, zip codes, thesauri, acronyms, weights & measures, and more.
• Internet Public Library from University of Michigan. A graphical presentation, with reference sources by broad subject area.
• The WWW Virtual Library. A lengthy alphabetical listing of subjects, from Aboriginal Studies to Zoos.

Special Search Tools

• Thomas Congressional Records, maintained by the Library of Congress. This is a searchable database, to find records of bills before the present Congress (104th Session) and the last one (103rd).
• Dejanews, to search postings to newsgroups. This is one way to find experts in your field, or to find out who is talking about your country.
• Tilenet List of Listservs, to find an electronic discussion list on your topic.
• Ethics Updates, edited by Lawrence Hinman from the University of San Diego. Collections of resources on lots of current controversial issues (death penalty, abortion, world hunger, poverty & welfare, etc.)
• UCSC's Gopher. Use this site to find U.S. State travel advisories, weather information, local gophers in your country. See if the NSF has issued any grants in your country.

Career Sites

CareerWEB

Job opportunities

College Grad Job Hunter

Occupational Resources

The Definitive Internet Career Guide

This is the big one!

StudentCenter

Career and employment information for college, graduate students and recent graduates; includes resume, interview, job-hunting how-to's; and more!

Resume Library

List your resume with our database. This is a free service!

Access to Electronic Texts

• Library of Congress . Electronic texts and Publishing Resources
• Library Information Servers via WWW

Fulltext Reference Tools

• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
• Webster's Dictionary
• Reference Shelf. Links to several Internet-accessible reference works.
• Quotations Page

Finding People

• North American Institutions
• CurtinLink: Finding People on the Internet

Government Sites

• Thomas Congressional Records, maintained by the Library of Congress. This is a searchable database, to find records of bills before the present Congress (104th Session) and the last one (103rd).
• FedWorld Information Site. Scroll down far enough and you'll get a list of subject categories.
• FedWorld FTP site, more than 10,000 data files of various sorts that have been produced by U.S. Government agencies. Federal Job Announcements, White House press releases, IRS tax forms and instructions and Cancer information.
• U.S. Government Printing Office, the largest publisher in the world.
• U.S. Treasury Dept A special page for tax information.
• United Nations Homepage
• United Nations Development Porgramme Sustainable Human Development provides links to the main WWW servers in the UN and other international organizations.

Electronic Mail Lists

• Directory of Scholarly E-conferences
• Tilenet List of Listservs, for a subject tree organization of lists.
• Lizst Directory of E-Mail Discussion Groups. A huge searchable list.

   

Newsgroups

• Dejanews, to search postings to newsgroups. One way to find experts in your field, or to find out who is talking about your topic.
• Lizst of Newsgroups. A searchable list of over 13,000 newsgroups.

   

FAQs (Frequently Asked Question files)

• Index of/Usenet/news-FAQs. An alphabetical index, from Sunsite.
• Usenet FAQs . A searchable file from Ohio State

   

Publishing Industry Sites

• Science Magazine , principal publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Summaries of some articles, full text of some. Searching & browsing features.
• San Francisco Chronicle. Read today's news, plus use keyword searches to find articles from issues since November, 1994.
• Reuter's News Service, the international wire service. No searching capabilities, but you can scan through a list of headlines and summaries.
• Associated Press National Wire Service, brought to you through the Boston Globe.
• Online magazines, from the Nando Online News Network.
• The Trident Newspaper from Santa Cruz High School
• One World Express World news service as joint venture of such organizations as Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Save Our Seas, etc. Good resource for current news of Third World countries.
• Editor & Publisher's list of worldwide newspapers available on the net.
• Daily News, links to hundreds of newspapers from around the world.
• CNN News, with a search engine to look for articles on your topic in back issues.
• The Zine Thing, a list of 45 indexes to magazines and a few newspapers on the net.

Evaluating Sites

• Bogus Bob Dole site.
• Cold War Human Testing. Notice URLs for the reports are in the site owner's directory, so accuracy is uncertain.
• FAIR -- Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. Focusing on the "narrow corporate ownership of the press."Examples of Primary Sources:
• Body Art Page. Body tatoos and piercing as a lifestyle.
• Mulvaney on Bomb Disposal . Cartoonist's manual on bomb disposal during WWII.

Social Implications of the Internet

Alienation vs. Connectivity

• The Virtual Self , where contributors have no face and no body.
• Romance and the Internet, from the Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture. A collection of articles on Internet Love.
• Nashville Net Community, where you can read personal ads, talk with writers, or join religious discussions.
• Violation and Virtuality, a case of deception in the online chat rooms.
• Pueblos Virtuales, for Latino Communities on the net.

   

Censorship and Pornography

• Internet Censorship. A list of links to sites concerned with the new telecommunications bill.
• Jornoporn: Dissection of the Time Scandal, by Hotwired

Economic Power

• Entrepreuner's Mall of Opportunity, or how to make $$$ on the web.
• Yahoo's Business & Economy Category, with listings for news, employment, etc...

Political Power

• Electronic Connectivity and Information Exchange in Africa, by Nancy Hafkin, talks about a real-life experiment in the 'information as economic power' theory.
• Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional, or the National Zapatista Liberation Army, fighting to liberate Chiapas.