Kopie von: Subject Searching

[HELGA_DICKEL _at__ FEM-K.rhein-main.de (Helga Dickel)]

Diese Nachricht kommt urspr|nglich von der WMST-L (Women's Studies- List)  
und ist sicherlich auch f|r diese Liste interessant.
Helga Dickel

## Nachricht vom 06.12.95 weitergeleitet
## Ursprung : helga_dickel _at__ fem9.ZER
## Ersteller: cwu6 _at__ STUDENTS.WISC.EDU

Finding material by subject on the World Wide Web can be very frustrating.
The web search mechanisms are mostly generated automatically by computer
robots, not humans, who go out crawling, worming, or whatevering through
web pages looking for matches to strings of characters rather than concepts.
To understand what you'll be retrieving it is a good idea to read the
information under "help" if the search mechanism you are using provides
one to learn what level of information in the sites the searcher looks
at (ex: URLs, site titles, all links associated with a site, actual
contents of the site). Sometimes you can then choose which of these
elements you want searched.


One of the newest, called "Excite" gives users a lot of relevance ranking
information and immediate branching. When you find something closest
to what you are looking for, you can click on the "confidence ikon" to the left
of the site information. You will then obtain
a list of sites the Excite computer has matched with that site. This is
a commercial site, but you get some sites free, and can request more by
clicking on "next documents."
    Address is http://www.excite.com

Yahoo is a directory of web sites. To find women's studies sites it is
better to go directly to that area of the directory than it is to use
the search mechanism. Go to
    http://www.yahoo.com/Social_Science/Women_s_Studies/
Other related areas of the Yahoo directory are
    http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Gender_Issues/
    http://www.yahoo.com/Health/Women_s_Health/


The largest accumulation of web information is retrievable through
Lycos, BUT: Before doing a search, if you want to search for a two or more word
term such as "women's studies," choose "search options form " first,
and change the option to "match ALL terms (and)" -- otherwise you
will retrieve sites with either "women's" OR "studies." Lycos also lets
you manipulate how closely you want the terms to match -- I am not sure
how the computer interprets the different choices, but my advice is to
choose "good match" or better if you want to cut down on less relevant
hits.   Address for Lycos:
    http://www.lycos.com/

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!



    Phyllis Holman Weisbard                (608) 263-5754
    Women's Studies Librarian              pweis _at__ wiscmacc (Bitnet)
    University of Wisconsin System         pweis _at__ macc.wisc.edu (Internet)
    Room 430 Memorial Library
    728 State Street, Madison, WI 53706