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Library
Guides: Child Development 39, 146 &154
Instructor, Dr. Jeanette Allison
Developed by Connie Fly, Librarian
Web Page Address: http://cos.edu/library/childdevelopment154.htm
Overview
- Benefits to using the Internet for research includes access to:
very current information, an enormous amount of information, obscure and
arcane information, digitized version of primary sources, searchable databases
and datasets, government and international information
- Other key benefits include speed, timeliness, multimedia and hyper
linking, and available anytime.
- The downside to using the Internet for research includes :
difficulty in conducting effective searches, lack of historical perspective,
lack of permanence of Web pages, selectivity of coverage, quality and accuracy
of information can be questionable, and there is no overall editorial process.
In addition there is a huge amount of the Internet that is "off-limits" to
search engines and not retrievable. These include commercial fee-based
databases that require passwords to access as well as free databases whose
information can only be mined by using the search engine provided at their Web
site. The COS Library provides access to several commercial databases listed
on our Electronic Resources Webpage.
- A database is a related collection of structured information
searchable by a computer and is a powerful research tool. Searching a
database IS NOT the same as searching the Internet.
Subject Directory and Search Engine Tips
What is the difference between a Internet Subject
Directory and a Search Engine?
Subject Directories - A subject
directory is a catalog of sites collected and organized by humans. Subject
directories are often called subject "trees" because they start with a few main
categories and then branch out into subcategories, topics, and subtopics.
Because humans organize the websites in subject directories, you can often find
a good starting point if your topic is included. Directories are also useful for
finding information on a topic when you don't have a precise idea of what you
need. Examples include the COS Library
Internet by Subject Directory-Child Development or
Google
Directory - Early Childhood Special Needs or The
Librarians Index to the Internet.
Search Engines - While humans organize and
catalog subject directories, search engines rely on computer programs called
spiders or robots to crawl the Web and log the words on each page. With a search
engine, keywords related to a topic are typed into a search "box." The search
engine scans its database and returns a file with links to websites containing
the word or words specified. Because these databases are very large,
search engines often return thousands of results. Without search strategies or
techniques, finding what you need can be like finding a needle in a haystack.
Examples include Google or
Teoma or
Alta Vista .
- All search tools on the Web are not alike, use more than one.
- Try search engines maintained by
Academic Institutions as well as
Commercial Search
Engines.
- Search engines are vulnerable to "spamming", index only a portion of
the Internet, and can be slow to update their indexing. This means they
will frequently miss new very relevant Web sites and retrieve "dead"
hyperlinks.
- Problems in getting results from a search engine include: too
many Web pages retrieved, not enough Web pages retrieved; and irrelevant Web
pages retrieved.
- Steps to remedy these problems are; choosing the RIGHT search
engines for your topic, using appropriate keywords and their synonyms, and
using Boolean operators appropriately to expand and or narrow your
retrieval.
Recommended Websites to begin your research
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This page was created August 30, 2005. This page was last updated:
March 03, 2008
For questions and comments, please mail to:
connief@cos.edu
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