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Finding Web Sites
By far, the best search engine on the World Wide Web is Google, which is located and maintained at Stanford University. Google allows for phrase searches, for combination (boolean) searches, and for domain limitations. For example, if you wanted to find study skills sites that included online tutorials and were run by educational institutions, you would type in the following (including spaces and punctuation):
"study skills" "online tutorial" site:.edu
The Google command for domain limitation is site: followed by the domain you wish to limit results to, such as government agencies (.gov), universities (.edu), not-for-profit organizations (.org), and military sites (.mil). By typing site:.edu in the above search, you are telling the search engine to return only those sites that come from universities and educational institutions. The Google command for a phrase search is enclosing the phrase within quotes. So when you typed "study skills" (in quotes), you tell the search engine not to return sites with the word study in them, unless that word is immediately followed by the word skills. The space between the three commands takes the place of the boolean operator and, thus allowing you to combine terms.
Of course, you can also click on Google's Advanced Search options, which would allow you to more graphically envision your search strategy. And as always with the web, keep in mind that site evaluation is important, as this web tutorial instructs.
Now try typing the following into Google:
"purple math"
This search will return a wonderful website, Purple Math, which is a one stop guide to problems with Algebra. If you wanted to find another website that might help you with math issues, let's say geometry, we suggest you try a search as follows (spaces and punctuation included):
geometry tutorial site:.edu
You may have pulled up the Elementary Geometry Tutorial in your results list. This is a site run by the Penn State University's Department of Mathematics.
The other excellent search engine on the web is called All The Web. However, it is not as intuitive as Google. You have to click on Advanced Search in order to get it to handle phrases correctly, or in order to limit your results by domain extension. Still, alltheweb.com allows some commands that Google does not, so if you need to do an expert search, give it a try. Where both Google and All The Web allow you to search for images, only All the Web will allow you to find video and audio files.
Van Viator
Reference Librarian
225 Ellender Memorial Library
Phone: 985-448-4661
Tony Fonseca
Electronic Resources / Reference Librarian
230 Ellender Memorial Library
Phone: 985-448-4675
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