College of Charleston Libraries Adelston Library outside

Services icon

Web Searching

General Search Engines

Google
"+" searches stop words, keyword, "-" removes keyword. Double quotes for phrase. Go to Google's Advanced Search. Download Google tip sheet.

Yahoo!Search
Different than the Yahoo directory and Google search.

YahooMindset
allows users to adjust results on a sliding scale that ranges between shopping and researching.

Twingine
searches Google and YahooSearch simultaneously and presents results side by side on a split screen.

A9
a new search engine from Amazon.com

Ask.com

Mooter
Clusters search results in categories.

^ go to top

Metasearch Engines

Metasearch engines, also called parallel search engines or simultaneous search engines, search several different search engines and web directories at the same time.

I Boogie

Fazzle

Ixquick

EZ2Find

Query Server

Clusty

infonetware

^ go to top

International Web Search

Portals to the world
links to electronic resources from around the world organized by the library of congress

Country Based Search Engines

Fagan Finder’s (Search Engine Ultimate Interface)
Use this search engine when you are using words that include letters with diacritical mark such as a circumflex, accent mark or umlaut --Example: café or München.

One World - Nations Online

Search Engine Colossus

International Google

International Yahoo

The Translation Wizard
includes nearly 50 languages!

^ go to top

Academic Web Resources

Portals to the world
links to electronic resources from around the world organized by the library of congress

Country Based Search Engines

Fagan Finder’s (Search Engine Ultimate Interface)
Use this search engine when you are using words that include letters with diacritical mark such as a circumflex, accent mark or umlaut --Example: café or München.

One World - Nations Online

Search Engine Colossus

International Google

International Yahoo

The Translation Wizard
includes nearly 50 languages!

^ go to top

Books Web Search Tools

A9
register at Amazon for password to use content

Google Book Search
searches the full text of select books. beta mode.

Live Search Books (beta release)
Includes “noncopyright” books from the collections of the British Library, the University of California, and the University of Toronto. More libraries will be joining in the future. The books will be available to download in PDF. Many of the titles are not included in Google Book Search.

WorldCat.org
WorldCat is the largest library network in the world, includes 1.3 billion items in more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. In beta.

College of Charleston Libraries-Online Reference-Books

^ go to top

Learning Objects and Classroom Resources

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

MIT open courseware

BELLE Project
Broadband Enabled Life Long Learning

CAREO
Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects

National Foundation Science Foundation Resources

World Lecture Hall
free online course material from around the world.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence
free

Learning Objects at Wesleyan University

Wisconsin Online Resource Center

CLOE
The Co-operative Leraning Object Exchange

Exploritorium: The Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception

Syllabus Finder
Center for History and New Media

Fathom
Online resources from Columbia University

Learning Objects Collection
Comprehensive list of learning objects from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

^ go to top

Subject Directories

Librarians Index to the Internet

WWW Virtual Library
the oldest catalog of the Web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of html and the Web itself, in 1991 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Internet Scout Project
Since 1994, the Internet Scout Project has focused on research and development projects that provide better tools and services for finding, filtering and delivering online information and metadata.

BUBL Information Service
Selected Internet resources covering all academic subject areas. Centre for Digital Library Research, Strathclyde University, Glasgow G1 1XH, Scotland

Open Directory

Argus Clearinghouse

Internet Public Library

^ go to top

Invisible Web

Complete Planet
an index to 103,000 databases

Infomine
Scholarly Internet Resource Collections

FirstGov
The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal

GPO Access
access information from all three branches of the U.S. Government using the Government Printing Office Web site.

Digital Librarian
"a librarian's choice of the best of the web."

MagPortal
link to "free" magazine articles using catagories or search engine.

^ go to top

Images

Picture History
historical images

Ditto
visual search engine

Google Image Search

New York Public Library Picture Collection
a collection of 30,000 digitized images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923.

Digital Librarian -- Images
selective and somewhat random list

Fagan Finder -- Image Search Engines

Prints and Photographs Reading Room
Library of Congress

Cartography Associates Visual Collections
Images of Art, History and Culture.

^ go to top

Multimedia

Singing Fish
search engine for web-based audio and video material

Yahoo Search
limit searches to images or videos

Blinkx
searches video news clips, your desktop, and more.

^ go to top

Institutional Repositories

Preprint Services

Blogs

Podcasts

People

infobel

411.com

argali
Requires a download but one of the most complete telephone, e-mail, address directories on the net.

^ go to top

Web Searching Guides and Tutorials

Finding Information on the Web, a Tutorial
This is an outstanding and thorough compilation of resources used for teaching Web searching at UC Berkeley. Includes charts, handouts, exercises, and PowerPoint files.

Finding Web Pages
Web searching techniques from Duke University.

Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web
A basic tutorial on how to search the Web. Available in Spanish and English from USC Beaufort.

Internet Detective (for students)
Internet Detective is a free online tutorial designed to help university and college students develop Internet research skills. The tutorial examines the critical thinking process and offers practical advice on evaluating the quality of web sites.

RDN Virtual Training
A set of free, discipline specific online tutorials designed to help students, lecturers, and researchers improve their Internet information literacy and IT skills. The RDN, a free national gateway from the United Kingdom, selects, catalogs, and delivers high quality Internet resources related to higher education.

NoodleTools
Helps you find the best search strategy for your information need.

Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher
From the American Library Association.

Search Engine Showdown
Provides news, reviews, stats, and etc.

Search Engines Chart

Search Engine Watch 
Provides news, reviews, reports, and etc.

Virtual Chase--Key Resources for Web Research
Although the content is intended for legal professionals, it is highly inclusive and useful to academics.

^ go to top

Evaluation

Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools
From Cornell.

Central Ops
Free online network utilities such as "domain dossier" where you can track down the author/sponsor of any website.

^ go to top

Web Archives

Waybackmachine
Browse through 55 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.

Internet Archive
The Internet Archive offers permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.

^ go to top

Tips

  1. Use phrase searching for multiple word phrases by enclosing the phrase in quotation marks--Example "War and Peace.”
  2. Use advanced searching mode whenever possible for more precise searching.
  3. Capitalize Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT.
  4. Use the most specific or esoteric words you can think of to describe your search.
  5. Use the command "Control-F" or "Edit > Find in Page" to search for a word within a long Web document.
  6. Understand the difference between domains-- .com, .org., .gov, .edu-- and limit your search to the best domain.
  7. Highlight, cut, and paste to save retyping text or to move text to a new document.
  8. Use + to require a word in your search or – to eliminate a word from your search.
  9. Change the word order or try new words if your search doesn’t bring you the desired results.
  10. Ask a librarian for help or use the Subject Guides from C of C Library home page.
  11. Remember to use library databases which provide authoritative resources.  To identify databases for research, use the library subject guides

^ go to top

box top
search place holder
Phone: (843)953.5530 | Fax: (843)953.8019
College of Charleston Libraries | 205 Calhoun Street
Mailing Address: 66 George Street, Charleston, South Carolina, 29424