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How do you select a good internet search engine? Or do you just go with the flow and use whatever the default or requisite search engine is for your particular device and set-up? Those younger than a certain age likely will not remember the pre-web days of ftp and telnet and archie and veronica searches. If they know something about those days and those techniques, they may be inclined to dismiss them as primitive or archaic. And yet, there was a real value in forcing users to pin down what they were really looking for and refine their search strategy.
Ideally we should be able to meld the skills that humans excel at with those tasks that computers do best to form a kind of super-human skill set or tool kit. And as humans, let's not abdicate the responsibility for using our human judgement to pick the right tool for the job at hand!
So far, I have yet to find the ideal search engine, or preferably a cluster of them, along the lines of the metasearch sites that let you use several search engines simultaneously. I do sometimes find it helpful to read review articles that rate search engines according to certain criteria. There are plenty out there although with the search tool landscape constantly changing and evolving, I like to check regularly and find the most recent reviews. Here's one example:
https://www.lifewire.com/best-search-engines-2483352
For any kind of in-depth research, I consider it absolutely vital to be able to "look under the hood" and determine as far as I can the search algorithm that applies. That means at a minimum some sort of "advanced search" functionality. Can you use Boolean logic and wildcards and date ranges? What exactly is being trawled here? Titles, keywords, controlled subject headings or categories, full text? Can you weight your search terms relative to each other? Can you search by format? Will it tell you about content behind a paywall, even if further steps are needed to actually access that content? Who is behind the search engine? A purely commercial enterprise? An academic institution? A government department? Is it paid by other interests to advertise their products or services near the beginning of your search results, regardless of their relevance?
Then of course there's the problem of privacy and security and what they do with your information. DuckDuckGo has gained a respectable following from stating that it doesn't track you. And I do find it useful for quick, simple searches. But it's a bit of a one-trick pony as far as I can see. It's very opaque; I don't really know what-all it's searching and what search operators it understands. There's no "advanced search" capability that I've been able to find. I do sometimes read its news releases but they're very U.S.-oriented and again, they focus only on the privacy aspect, not on any features that might make them particularly efficient at teasing out appropriate and relevant search results.
I'll leave it at that for today. For once, this entry is not primarily about Covid-19, although most of us are probably spending much more time online (and less in bricks-and-mortar research facilities like libraries) since the pandemic swept into our lives. And it IS very topical too, given that the U.S. Department of Justice is taking Google to court.
Ideally we should be able to meld the skills that humans excel at with those tasks that computers do best to form a kind of super-human skill set or tool kit. And as humans, let's not abdicate the responsibility for using our human judgement to pick the right tool for the job at hand!
So far, I have yet to find the ideal search engine, or preferably a cluster of them, along the lines of the metasearch sites that let you use several search engines simultaneously. I do sometimes find it helpful to read review articles that rate search engines according to certain criteria. There are plenty out there although with the search tool landscape constantly changing and evolving, I like to check regularly and find the most recent reviews. Here's one example:
https://www.lifewire.com/best-search-engines-2483352
For any kind of in-depth research, I consider it absolutely vital to be able to "look under the hood" and determine as far as I can the search algorithm that applies. That means at a minimum some sort of "advanced search" functionality. Can you use Boolean logic and wildcards and date ranges? What exactly is being trawled here? Titles, keywords, controlled subject headings or categories, full text? Can you weight your search terms relative to each other? Can you search by format? Will it tell you about content behind a paywall, even if further steps are needed to actually access that content? Who is behind the search engine? A purely commercial enterprise? An academic institution? A government department? Is it paid by other interests to advertise their products or services near the beginning of your search results, regardless of their relevance?
Then of course there's the problem of privacy and security and what they do with your information. DuckDuckGo has gained a respectable following from stating that it doesn't track you. And I do find it useful for quick, simple searches. But it's a bit of a one-trick pony as far as I can see. It's very opaque; I don't really know what-all it's searching and what search operators it understands. There's no "advanced search" capability that I've been able to find. I do sometimes read its news releases but they're very U.S.-oriented and again, they focus only on the privacy aspect, not on any features that might make them particularly efficient at teasing out appropriate and relevant search results.
I'll leave it at that for today. For once, this entry is not primarily about Covid-19, although most of us are probably spending much more time online (and less in bricks-and-mortar research facilities like libraries) since the pandemic swept into our lives. And it IS very topical too, given that the U.S. Department of Justice is taking Google to court.
