Presents a chart that explains the search syntax, features, and commands used by the 12 most widely used general Web search engines. Discusses Web standardization, expanded types of content searched, size of databases, and search engines that include both simple and advanced versions. (LRW)

Discusses the confusion among end users in using Boolean operators when searching electronic resources. Highlights include search engines; site-specific search engines; the counterintuitive nature of Boolean logic; hidden defaults; the problem of conceptualization; reprogramming defaults; and a lack of user education. (LRW)

Presents the architecture and algorithms behind Matchsimile, an approximate string matching lookup tool designed for extracting person and company names from large texts. Highlights include name formation rules, defining the search problem, system architecture, recognizing pattern words, recognizing whole patterns, and performance. (Author/MES)

Discussion of knowledge management for electronic data focuses on creating a high quality similarity ranking algorithm. Topics include similarity ranking and unstructured data management; searching, categorization, and summarization of documents; query evaluation; considering sentences in addition to keywords; and vector models. (LRW)

Describes resources for researchers called the Invisible Web that are hidden from the usual search engines and other tools and contrasts them with those resources available on the surface Web. Identifies specialized search tools, databases, and strategies that can be used to locate credible in-depth information. (Author/LRW)

Discusses the need for tools that allow effective analysis of search engine queries to provide a greater understanding of Web users' information seeking behavior and describes a study that developed an effective strategy for selecting samples from large-scale data sets. Reports on Poisson sampling with data logs from the Excite search engine.…

There comes a time when one asks even of Yahoo, even of Google, "Is this all?" Yahoo and Google do an admirable job of categorizing the Internet and making its contents more accessible. But ultimately they're search tools, not research tools. There's a great deal of information not on the Internet, particularly thoroughly researched,…

Internet search has become a routine computing activity, with regular visits to a search engine--usually Google--the norm for most people. The vast majority of searchers, as recent studies of Internet search behavior reveal, search only in the most basic of ways and fail to avail themselves of options that could easily and effortlessly improve…

The Google Book Search Library Project, in which millions of books from libraries will be scanned and made searchable on the Web, has led to controversy and legal action. Publishers are suing Google for copyright infringement, while Google claims their use falls under the fair use privilege of the "Copyright Act". An overview of the library…

Mass digitization of the bound volumes that we generally call "books" has begun, and, thanks to the interest in Google and all that it does, it is getting widespread media attention. The Open Content Alliance (OCA), a library initiative formed after Google announced its library book digitization project, has brought library digitization projects…

One of the primary goals of social studies education in the United States is to prepare students for civically active, politically informed, and socially engaged democratic citizenship. Too often, however, the curricula fall short of this goal. Textbooks and state curriculum standards tend to portray citizenship as a static concept rather than an…

To do solid academic research, college students need to look beyond the computer search engine. This short, practical book introduces students to the important components of the information-seeking process. "The Elements of Library Research" provides a foundation for success in any research assignment, from a freshman paper to a senior thesis.…

Distance education created new challenges regarding the delivery of large size isochronous continuous streaming media (SM) objects. In this paper, we consider the design of a framework for customized SM presentations, where each presentation consists of a number of SM objects that should be retrieved and displayed to the user in a coherent…

This article explores a hypothesis that the Internet and the World Wide Web form an alternative resource to that provided by conventional adult education providers. The example used is the dissemination and transfer of information on and analysis of issues concerning women and violence. Four important issues for adult (that is, post-compulsory)…

Proposes a fuzzy multiset model for information clustering with application to information retrieval on the World Wide Web. Highlights include search engines; term clustering; document clustering; algorithms for calculating cluster centers; theoretical properties concerning clustering algorithms; and examples to show how the algorithms work.…