by

Hershey H. Friedman, Ph.D.
Professor of Marketing and Business, Department of Economics
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
e-mail: x.friedman@worldnet.att.net

© 1998 H. H. Friedman

Using the World Wide Web for Research

The World Wide Web is a powerful tool for research. The following is a brief tutorial designed to help students and scholars use the web for their research.

For most of your research needs, I recommend using dogpile.com and northernlight.com. These two search engines are more than adequate for most research papers. Please note that no search engine is good for all searches. Some search engines are especially good for certain types of searches, e.g., literature or business and may be inadequate for other types of searches.

This is one of the largest search engine indices on the web and is a favorite of mine. It is a good place to start since it contains about 20 different multiple search engines. Multiple search engines provide results from several search engines in one shot. You will not have to do individual searches using, say, Yahoo, Excite, Webcrawler, AltaVista, Lycos, etc. When you get to the merrydew.demon site, click on "Multiple Search Engines" and you will find about twenty different multi-search engines to choose from. DogPile is a good place to start with your research.

The merrydew.demon site also provides you with more than a dozen People Finders if you wish to locate someone. Some of the major People Finders it is linked to include: BigFoot, WhoWhere?, SwitchBoard, and InfoSpace. The merrydew.demon site also provides you with nine different Discussion Group search engines, dozens of Web Search Engines (e.g., Yahoo!, WebCrawler, Magellan, HotBot, AltaVista, Northern Light, etc.), and Science Search Engines (e.g., MedLine, Journal of Bio and Medicine).

Other search engines available at the merrydew.demon site include Law Search to search for information on law, TV, Film and Music Search for information on television, movies, and music, Press Search for articles from newspapers and magazines, and Image Search Engines if you are looking for a picture of something, e.g., a picture of a llama, and several other search engines (e.g., Recipe Search, AT&T Toll free Directory, etc.).

http://www.google.com/

Google is now my favorite search engine.  Indeed, I recommend that you try them first,

This is a superb multi-search engine that is very similar to DogPile. You can decide whether you want Husky Search to do a Fast Search (5 seconds), Default Search (30 seconds), or a Quality Search (3 minutes). This search engine also clusters the hits so that you can find the relevant articles more easily.

Northern Light is another favorite site of ours for those interested in doing serious research. It claims to search millions of articles that are not on other search engines. One important advantage of this search engine is that it organizes the documents it finds into folders. For instance, our search on "Egyptian mythology" returned over 10,000 items. These items were organized into several folders such as Folklore, Pyramids of Giza, Tarot, Resurrection, Religion, and Vishnu. Unfortunately, Northern Light is not completely free. Some of their documents are part of a special collection which is not free and can be purchased for a very nominal fee and downloaded to your own computer. Also, you get too many hits with Northern Light and you will have to do a good deal of sifting to find relevant articles. Incidentally, you can access Northern Light at the merrydew.demon site.

The New York Times allows you to do an on-line search of their archives of NY Times articles written in the last year for a nominal fee.

Inference Find is an excellent multiple search engine which can also be accessed from the merrydew.demon site.

Web Search provides an excellent multiple search engine. In addition, you can use it for searching for people, news, heath & fitness, how to pages, classifieds, employment tools (i.e., job searching/placement), software search, travel, and finding photography or music.

You can also access Web Search through merrydew.demon.

Our search on Egyptian mythology got several excellent matches using Flash Net’s LookSmart search engine. Flash Net allows you to "Explore by Subject." In particular, you might find Reference and Education very useful since it provides you with choices including Reference Desk and Libraries and Archives. The menu choices under Reference Desk include: Ask an Expert; Biographies & Quotes; Dictionaries; Encyclopedias; Government and Stats; Maps, Atlases & Flags; People Finders; Weather. You can also find useful tips on how to use search engines at this site.

The Tribune Online Super Search allows you to search several categories including the following: Business, Consumer, Online Discussions, General Interest Search Engines (including multiple search engines), Entertainment, Health Allergies, Media, and Miscellaneous Categories (including Schools and Education and Science and Scholarly Journals), and Reference Information (Language Arts, Dictionaries, White Pages, Yellow Pages, etc.).

Electric Library enables you to search 150 newspapers, hundreds of magazines, numerous classic books, two international newswires, hundreds of maps, thousands of television and radio transcripts, and a huge number of photographs. It is free for thirty days.

Internet Scout Project shows you the best resources on the internet. In particular, you might find their Searching the Internet, Web Tools, and Internet Publications useful. The Scout Report for Business and Economics is a biweekly report of useful internet resources for those interested in business and economics. There are also Scout Reports for Science and Engineering and Social Sciences.

They claim to provide "500 expert Guides mining the net on thousands of topics." You may find their guides on business, computing/science, culture/belief, health, and new/issues very useful and interesting.

LEXIS-NEXIS is probably the world’s leading provider of business, legal, government, and international information. It will provide you with access to more than one billion documents. Unfortunately, it is available to subscribers only and is quite expensive.

My Virtual Reference Desk provides you with access to headlines, maps, people searches, shopping, stock quotes, yellow pages, encyclopedia.com, information please, dictionaries, and Roget’s Thesaurus. It also links to several news sources, magazines, business publications, search engines, and much more.

Research-It provides you with dictionaries (even a rhyming one), thesaurus, translator, people search, Bible search, quotation search, geographic search, telephone search, currency converter, CIA Factbook, stock market search, and shipping and mailing tools.

http://www.excite.com/reference/

Excite’s reference site has a people finder, yellow pages, company information, shopping, travel, computers, entertainment, government information, news information, dictionaries, quotation finders, and postal services.

Two additional excellent electronic reference desks.

Market Guide is a free site and will provide you with information about companies.

Hoover’s Online provides very basic information about companies. It is also a free site.

This is the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. From here you can access the EDGAR Archives. Companies must file various disclosures with the SEC and they are available online. The EDGAR disclosures are complex and are not for novices.

You will find a great deal of information at this site including managing your personal finances, stock and company information, financial information and quotes, and much more.

Thomson Investors Network provides investors with useful information to make informed investment decisions. There is a nominal fee but it is worth it if you are a serious investor.

Pathfinder.com is an excellent site owned by Time, Inc., publisher of Time, People, and Money magazines. There are several useful sites at the money.com portion of this site. You might also wish to look at the drop-down box at the bottom of the page near the words Time, People, and Money You can get to "Ask Dr. Weil" from there, a great medical resource for those interested in alternative medicine.

This is the University of Pennsylvania Lippincott library URL. You can go to Current Business News, Electronic Job Hunt, Finance and Investments, Business Reference Desk, Business Sites by Subject, Electronic Journals, Working Papers, and a Business CyberGuide.

This will provide you with access to various resources for economists on the web.