Use known web sites

Think about the type of information you are searching for. Do you already know of any web sites that would be likely to contain this information? Go to these known web sites and use their search tool to see if they have relevant information.

Try Google Scholar

Google Scholar indexes scholarly information.

TIP:

• Subject coverage varies between search engines so use at least two search engines for your searches.
• Look at the Help screens or search tips for shortcuts and/or special features.
• Use an advanced search method if it is available. This will provide you with more options for reducing 'the rubbish'.
• Search for words that normally occur together as phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks. For example: "Great Barrier Reef". Advanced search screens usually provide an option specifically for phrase searching.
• A vast amount of high quality information is available in Acrobat Reader format as scanned copies of the original print documents. These documents are often referred to as pdf documents and a good search engine will allow you to select this file type (and others) in your search.
• Use domain searching to exclude 'rubbish' (by restricting .com) or to limit your results to specific domain types (such as .edu or .gov).
• Use the Internet to support the information you find in books, journals and other reputable sources. Using web sources only is not good practice.
• Some agencies only publish online: for example some government reports.

Evaluating Internet sources

When you use any type of information, you need to evaluate it in terms of its quality and suitability for your topic.

Critical evaluation is most important when you use the Internet because anyone can publish on the web, and there are no filtering processes, quality checks or standards applied.

Take a look at the Library "How-to" Guide Internet Resource Evaluation. It provides a list of criteria you should always examine to decide about the quality of resources found on the Internet.