Using the Internet
You are no doubt familiar with using search engines such as Google to find information on the Internet. However, it is important to remember that search engines trawl through the Internet and automatically create collections of sites, with no regard to the quality of the information they find. You must also ensure you enter your searches properly so that you are not overwhelmed by irrelevant results.
Always look at the online help that the search engines offer to see how to enter phrases, how to link words, and how to use truncation etc. Whilst search engines can be useful for uncommon words, names and organizations, they are not so effective for subject searching.
The more effective way to find Internet resources on particular subjects is to use specialised Internet gateways or directories, which provide categorised lists of links that have been selected by experts in the particular subject field. You can usually browse and search these gateways to find relevant information. An example is The WWW Virtual Library, a catalogue of quality web resources, started in 1991 at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva. It is run by volunteer editors who compile pages of key links for their areas of expertise
See the Internet Tutorials page for access to this and other similar services.
