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Sujit Kulkarni

Id-1061875

Study Skills Assignment

Topic: Short Report comparing different means of identifying useful and accurate
sources of information from the internet.

Introduction:

There are many ways to find the material on the internet, but the question is which
one is the best way. The following response will investigate on some ways to search
the internet, most effective search engines for academic purposes & how to identify
good quality material on the internet.

Internet is the tool nowadays which everyone has in their homes, offices and almost
anywhere, one can’t imagine life without internet. In this report I will discuss some
ways of searching the internet.

How to search the internet:

One of the simplest & easy ways of searching on the internet is GOOGLE. Many
times we say our friends that if you do not understand anything let’s Google. So the
first way to search anything which comes in any one’s mind is to use Google website
and put the words in the search window & then the internet or the Google does the
rest by giving us all the information available for that particular word. So first let us
understand the processes of how the Google works in finding out the information
related to that particular word. Query is send to the web server, then the web server
sends the query to the index servers, this index is the same as the index in the back
of the book, it tells u which page contains the words that match the query. This query
then travels to the document servers, which actually retrieves the stored document,
the searched results are returned to the user in a fraction of a second. The second
best method to search on the internet is Wikipedia which somewhat works in the
same fashion as the Google. According to Bruce Gronssan the internet worked in
some different fashion, he explains that the internet or the search engine has some
database and the tools to generate and search that database. He says before the
browsers there was WAIS released in 1991and the XWAIS version provided a user
friendly GUI way to find information. But nowadays there are different ways to search
internet. There are sites, catalogues, journals, papers & e-books by which one can
also find information. These came be name academic search engines. But the
question is which one is the reliable and most effective search engine? Bruce
Gronssan further says that there are some sites which not only provide information
but also gives search database. There are different search engines for which a table
is given by Bruce Gronssan.The table is titled like when & how I should use which
search page. The Search engines used in table are Lycos, Magellan, Open text, Alta
Vista & Yahoo. Also search engines like catalogues & other things are also included
in the search engines. Bruce Gronssan also says always search as specifically as
possible. Use of words like AND & OR play a important role in searching the
database. The most common search engines are Lycos, Magellan, Open text, Alta
Vista & Yahoo. Using Boolean to marrow down a search rarely produces any results.
In practice, other ways of specifying a search besides detailed logic are much more
useful. The other ways of specifying a search besides detailed logic is using more
keywords and exact words.
Sujit Kulkarni

Id-1061875

Most effective search engines for academic purposes:

The most effective search engines for academic purposes can be the library
catalogue where one can get the journals, catalogues for the assignment purpose.
Also let us understand how one can be most effective with the search engines. The
basic thing is how one puts the word in the window for searching through the
database. Use of words like AND & OR play a important role in searching the
database. Once you get the information or the relevant e-book, first go to the
summary page to check the titles and see whether it matches with your topic of
interest. The AND & NOT also helps in eliminating the unwanted queries. The search
engine quality is measured in different aspects like the reliability & correctness of the
information & how the search engines determine relevance.

How to identify good quality material on the internet:-

To identify good quality material lot many studies are done. There are many theories
& tables put to identify good quality material. One of the way is that the no of
documents from the top 20 list were updated within the last six months was counted
& rated. Also the corresponding sets of documents retrieved by simple search as well
as by the data-restricted search were also calculated. And this showed that the
tested search engines had massive problems in determining the actual update of the
documents found. Another method is the search engine test results table in which
horizontal row contains items like engine, ‘’One item among many related pages’’,
‘’Obscure item test’’, Selectivity apple tress not computers test & comments. The
vertical row contains different type of engines. The rating chart can be sometimes
confusing to come to a conclusion. So no method is fully justified & still one have to
do own research for coming to the conclusion on which search engine is useful for
what sort of information. There are many surveys being done to identify good quality
material but no one stands out as a winner. Therefore to identify good quality
material on the internet we need to research the data base of the sites visited and
then short list the sited relevant to the information required.

Conclusion:

Today nobody’s know the real performance or the accuracy at which the search
engine gives information. There are several studies being done, but no such
conclusion is put forth that this search engine stands out. According to Lewandowski
& Höchstötter there was a lack of an overview of empirical results and of quality
measures used. What will make the search engines improve is the way they are
ranked and present results
Sujit Kulkarni

Id-1061875

List of References

1. Grossan, B. (1997) ‘Search Engines: What they Are, How they Work and
Practical Suggestions for Getting the Most Out of Them’ [online], available
from <http://www.webreference.com/content/search/features.html> [28
October 2010]

2. Intute: Virtual Training Suite (2006a), ‘Internet Detective’ available from


<http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/thegood.html> [29 October 2010]

3. Lewandowski . D and Höchstötter.N ‘’ Web Searching: A Quality


Measurement’’.

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