Compares links between 76 Chinese university Web sites with ranks obtained from the NetBig lists, using a specialized Web crawler to collect data. Provides a background to the higher education system in mainland China, describes the NetBig ranking scheme, and explains Web site crawling problems encountered. (Author/LRW)

Metasearching of online current news services is a potentially useful Web application of distributed information retrieval techniques. Reports experiences in building a metasearcher designed to provide up-to-date searching over a significant number of rapidly changing current news sites, focusing on how to merge results from the search engines at…

Discussion of information literacy and education focuses on a module developed to provide instruction related to Web searching. Highlights include basic Web search strategies; Web search tools, including directories, search engines, specialized search tools, and the use of pathfinder pages; and suggested practice activities. (Author/LRW)

Discusses the emergence of general audience digital libraries (GADLs), a context that represents a hybrid of both traditional information retrieval, using primarily bibliographic resources provided by database vendors, and popular information retrieval such as public search systems on the Web. Reports findings of a study investigating end-user…

Discussion of Web search strategies focuses on a comparative study of textual and graphical summarization mechanisms applied to search engine results. Suggests that thumbnail images (graphical summaries) can increase efficiency in processing results, and that enhanced thumbnails (augmented with readable textual elements) had more consistent…

Presents a query categorization approach to automatically classifying Web query terms into broad subject categories to provide in-depth analysis of users' search interests. Describes a test on search engine logs in Taiwan that shows the approach is efficient in dealing with large numbers of queries. (Author/LRW)

Discussion of ranking systems used in various settings, including college football and academic admissions, focuses on the Google search engine. Explains the PageRank mathematical formula that scores Web pages by connecting the number of links; limitations, including authenticity and accuracy of ranked Web pages; relevancy; adjusting algorithms;…

Discusses the use of link structure analysis in World Wide Web information retrieval and in retrieval and ranking algorithms of search engines. Presents two techniques which bias co-citation based link analyses towards favorable Web pages and away from undesired pages, and are then integrated into existing link-analyzing algorithms. (Author/LRW)

Suggests concepts related to information that would be valuable to library users, including the expenses related to information; unique qualities and characteristics of databases; limits of the Web; understanding differences between magazines and scholarly journals; search engine differences; and an appreciation for the amount and variety of…

Describes indexes to Web resources that have been created by librarians to be more discriminating than the usual Web search engines, some of which are organized by standard classification systems. Includes indexes by solo librarians as well as by groups of librarians, some in public libraries and some in higher education. (LRW)

Discusses electronic cheating in higher education made possible by new technologies. Highlights include statistics on plagiarism; using Web search engines and paper mills; and ways to combat cheating, including academic honesty policies, designing writing assignments with specific goals and instructions, being aware of what is available on the…

Describes a study that investigated the use of natural language questions on Web search engines. Highlights include query languages; differences in search engine syntax; and results of logistic regression and analysis of variance that showed aspects of questions that predicted significantly different performances, including the number of words,…

The Google search engine is growing in popularity and usually shines in performance ratings. This article summarizes findings from a technical paper written by Google's developers in 1998 before anyone had seen Google. Suggests that a careful reader of the paper will be rewarded with a deeper appreciation of the designers' ideas and…

This guide to search engines for the World Wide Web discusses selecting the right search engine; interpreting search results; major search engines; online tutorials and guides; search engines for kids; specialized search tools for various subjects; and other specialized engines and gateways. (LRW)

This guide discusses the use of the World Wide Web for library reference service. Part 1, "Ready Reference on the Web: Resources for Patrons," contains chapters on searching and meta-searching the Internet, using the Web to find people, news on the Internet, quality reference resources on the Web, Internet sites for kids, free full-text…