- Use web search engines, like Alta
Vista, Excite, Infind, and Yahoo.
Alas, these vital research aids all seem to have their own way of doing things, so if you
want to search more effectively, take the time to click on the Help or Advanced Search
button and learn the conventions. Searching the web with these engines can be inefficient,
but if you state your search terms well, you'll have to wade through much less garbage to
find the good stuff. Try more than one engine; the search terms you use on Alta Vista may
yield very different results on Excite.
- Some websites offer more specialized searches. For example, Fedstats lets you search for online information from
more than 70 US government agencies.
- Be sure that you have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer. Many
sites publish material in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). Download a PDF file,
open it with Acrobat, and you have on your computer screen an exact copy of the original.
You can download the latest version of Acrobat Reader free from Adobe.
- Some websites offer you a choice of download formats. PDF is great if you
want to preserve all the details of the original, like graphs and pictures. But if you're
downloading a table of numbers to be processed later, it might be a good idea to choose a
native spreadsheet format, or HTML, if they are offered . These formats can be imported
directly into a spreadsheet so you don't have to do so much tedious data entry.
- Look at links pages. For example, Randy Albelda's links
elsewhere on this site offer a highly focussed look around the web.
- Bookmark, bookmark, bookmark! Don't count on your memory to get you back
to a useful site. And keep your bookmarks (or favorites) organized.
- When you download something you think you can use, make a note of the URL
so that you can cite it later. Remember all the times you had to go back to the Periodical
Room to get the volume and issue numbers you forgot to write down?
- Your old copy of Turabian's Manual for Writers. . . may not help
you much when it comes to citing a web document. Try www.uvm.edu/~ncrane/estyles/ or www.census.gov/main/www/citation.html
for some guides to scholarly surfing and cyber-citation.
- Don't forget to include your downloads in your back-up protocol. (What!
You don't back up? So what do you do if an important file gets deleted or corrupted, or if
your hard drive fails?) Backing up is easier if you direct all your downloads to one
folder.
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