Smart web searching and evaluating
This website has been created to help you make the most of your valuable research time by providing tips on how to search the web effectively, and how to evaluate what you find.
Popular Search Engines | Search Tips | Subject Gateways | Evaluating What You Find | Useful Links
Popular Search Engines
There are dozens of available search engines (or search tools). Library staff recommend these search engines for their accuracy and reliability. If available, use the Advanced Search option to limit where your words appear on a webpage and to structure your search in an effective way.
| Google search engine | http://www.google.com.au/ | Advanced Search |
| MSN Search | http://www.bing.com/default.aspx | Advanced Search |
| Ask Jeeves Search | http://www.ask.com/ | Advanced Search |
| Metacrawler search engine | http://www.metacrawler.com |
Searches Google • Yahoo • Ask Jeeves • About • LookSmart • Overture • FindWhat |
Search Tips
You can find specific help from the individual search engine homepages. Look for help files, information pages, FAQs and guides to searching.
- Try to keep your search statements simple.
- Carefully choose your keywords, and remember to think about alternate terms that could be used e.g. "greenhouse effect" or "global warming".
- If you need to search on a single term, make the term as specific as possible.
- A single term limited to the title of a page, rather than anywhere on a page, is more likely to result in relevant material.
- Enclose "exact phrases" in quotation marks.
- Leave out common words, such as the, and, in and at
- Many search tools look for word variations, including single and plural terms e.g. australia will match to australian, australia's, australians etc.
- Use domains to limit your search to material on specific website, e.g. .gov.au for Australian government sites
- Don't worry about using capital letters.
Subject Gateways
Subject gateways list and organise resources into categories and sub-categories, and are recommended for the quality of their information. Experts in particular fields evaluate and select sites to create a compilation of scholarly resources in a discipline.
| SOSIG subject gateway | http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/ |
The Social Sciences Information Gateway (SOSIG) links to organizations and research agencies, electronic journals, mailing lists, reports and documents in a broad range of subjects.
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| PINAKEZ subject gateway | http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html |
PINAKES provides a comprehensive list of subject gateways.
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| WWW Virtual Library subject gateway | http://www.vlib.org.uk/ |
| The World Wide Web Virtual Library provides key links to a variety of quality internet resources. | |
Evaluating What You Find
How do you know that information you find is reliable and accurate? It’s
always important to consider the quality of the information you use. It is
especially important to critically evaluate web resources, as there is no quality
control on the Internet. No single person or organization has the task of verifying
the authenticity and accuracy of sites. As a researcher, the responsibility
for assessing the merit of information lies with you.
Some questions to ask yourself when evaluating Internet sites are
| Author |
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| Type of Information |
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| Purpose |
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| Sources |
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| Timeliness |
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If you can't find the answer to these questions, that may be reason enough
not to use a particular website or resource.
If you do use a website for an assignment, make sure you record the address
or URL of the site and the date upon which you visited it. This information
is essential to accurately cite the resource in a bibliography. Up-to-date
information about citing websites is available from Referencing
Styles website.
Useful Links
