• Finding Information with the Kenyon Library Home Page
• Finding Information with Subject Guides
• Finding Information with Searching Tools
• Finding Information with Internet Discussion lists

Finding Information on the World Wide Web

Presently there is no central catalog that reliably indexes the World Wide Web's contents. However, there are several useful approaches to finding information on the Web. Home Pages selectively collect topical resources, extensive subject guides are composed and regularly updated, and powerful searching tools are available free of charge. A thorough World Wide Web search includes the use of one or more of these services and tools.

Finding Information with the Kenyon Library Home Page

The Library created the Kenyon WWW Home Page as a guide to WWW resources tailored to the academic needs of Kenyon faculty and students. The Home Page provides links to resources in a wide range of subject areas. Resources are grouped by academic discipline. Additional categories include information on the WWW and the Internet; subject lists, indexes and searching tools; reference materials; newsletters and texts; and United States Government information.

The Kenyon Library WWW Home Page is accessible, via LYNX, to the Kenyon community through the Library Menu. See the document titled "LYNX, A World Wide Web Reader For The Vax" for access instructions.

Finding Information with Subject Guides

Various individuals and organizations on the Web collect WWW resources and arrange them by category. Although none of these subject guides is comprehensive, many of them are quite extensive. Some guides are highly selective, only allowing tried and true resources onto their lists. Other guides strive to collect all resources in a subject area, regardless of quality.

The subject guides listed below are accessible through the Kenyon Library Home Page, under the * Subject Lists, Indexes and Searching Tools heading. URL's are listed below so you may go directly to these guides, if you wish.

Clearinghouse for SubjectOriented Internet Resource Guides

http://www.lib.umich.edu/chhome.html

This is a collection of Internet subject guides maintained at the University of Michigan School of Library and Information Studies. Each guide contains brief annotated lists of high quality Internet resources, including but not limited to World Wide Web resources. Some of the guides contain direct hypertext links to Web resources, others provide URLs only.

The Online Whole Internet Catalog

http://gnn.interpath.net/gnn/wic/newrescat.toc.html

This is a collection of hypertext links to approximately 1000 Internet resources. Resources are included on the basis of quality and reliability. World Wide Web and other Internet resources are cataloged here.

World Wide Web Virtual Library: Subject Catalogue

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html

This is the largest and best organized collection of World Wide Web resources. The Virtual Library consists of over one hundred separate subject categories, maintained by individuals from all across the Internet. Although each subject category, or "Library", may look slightly different, each conforms to Virtual Library standards of organization, inclusion and updating. The Virtual Library is experimenting with the application of the Library of Congress Classification scheme, which will mirror the organizational scheme used by many paper libraries in the United States.

Each subject category on the Kenyon Library Home Page contains a link to the appropriate subject catalogue from the World Wide Web Virtual Library.

Finding Information with Searching Tools

An assortment of indexes and searching tools have been developed for the World Wide Web. Each one of these tools was developed by a different organization or individual. Therefore, the design and reliability of these tools vary. The best searching tools are in great demand by many Web searchers at any given moment. As a result, several repeated attempts at access may be required before an information search is completed.

The searching tools listed below, and several others, are accessible through the Kenyon Library Home Page, under the * Subject Lists, Indexes and Searching Tools heading. URL's are listed below so you may go directly to them, if you wish.

Lycos

http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu

Lycos (tm) is the catalog of the Internet. The Lycos web explorer searches the World Wide Web every day (including Gopher and FTP space), building a database of all the web pages it finds. The index is updated weekly.

The Pursuit search engine scours titles, headings, subheadings and key text of Web, Gopher and FTP documents for the user's key terms. It provides probabilistic retrieval from this catalog, taking auser's query and returning a sorted list of hits (the list is sorted by match score, and only documents with scores above the threshold are retrieved). The list of retrieved documents is immediately available via hypertext links.

The Lycos search form is pictured above.

To search for information on the World Wide Web using Lycos:

• Decide betwen the "small" and the "big" Lycos catalog, depending on the extent of your information search.

• Highlight the appropriate "Lycos search form" and press R.

• You may change your searching criteria by highlighting "Maxhits", "Minterms", "Minscore" or "Terse output" and pressing R. Select the best option and press R again.

• Enter a key word or phrase query (Boolean logic and truncation with * is permissible).

• Then highlight "Start search" and press R.

World Wide Web Worm (WWWW)

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWW.html

WWWW is a search engine that allows you to locate almost any World Wide Web hypertext (text seen highlighted in Netscape orLYNX) or World Wide Web information resource (URL), simply by specifying keywords. WWWW provides four types of search databases: citation hypertext, citation addresses (URL), HTML titles, and HTML addresses. The latter two are much smaller databases, which can therefore be searched faster.

The World Wide Web Worm search form is pictured above.

To search for information on the World Wide Web using the World Wide Web Worm:

• You may change your searching criteria by highlighting "1." or "a." or "matches" and pressing R. Select the best option and press R again.

• Use the down arrow key to place the cursor on the "Keywords:" line and type keyword(s).

• Highlight "Start search" and press R.

Finding Information with Internet Discussion lists

Not to be neglected are sources of World Wide Web information found outside of the World Wide Web. Various Internet discussion lists provide a steady supply of new and useful URLs to group subscribers.

If you are interested in a particular subject, subscribe to a discussion list centered about that subject. Announcements of relevant newWWW resources may be posted, as well as comments about old ones. If discussion of Internet resources is sparse, ask the participants to recommend WWW resources. You might collect a small number of Internet contacts in your field with whom you can discuss Internet resources outside of the confines of the discussion list.

Some discussion lists are devoted entirely to discussing and announcing Internet or World Wide Web resources. The resources discussed usually cover a broad range of subject disciplines.

Net Happenings announces new Internet resources, as well as conferences, papers and other Internet information. It is possible to subscribe to sub-lists so that you receive, for example, only announcements of WWW resources or only Gopher resources.

To subscribe, send the message subscribe Net-happenings to majordomo@is.internic.net