How to Search the Web
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Email ThisThe Internet: Defined and Explained
Understanding the technological underpinnings of the Internet and the World Wide Web will enhance... read more»
Web Site Credibility
Finding information on the Web is like being a police detective: your information is only as good... read more»
How Search Engines Work
Searching is the most popular way to find information on the Web, and search engines, which are... read more»
Choosing a Search Engine
This is a question most people don't ask, because established search routines are hard to escape.... read more»
The Invisible Web
Many of the Web’s most extensive sites work like libraries. These database sites keep all of... read more»
Web Directories
Web directories are lists of hand-selected sites compiled by Web users and organized into... read more»
Social Bookmarking Tools
One of the recent trends in Web research is "social bookmarking." Social bookmarking employs a practice called "tagging" that provides an alternative to search engines by incorporating human selection into the search process. Most search engines work by indexing Web sites through an automated process, and then use complex formulas to search their indexes to find relevant Web sites. With social bookmarking, a community of users compiles the index by collectively submitting (or bookmarking) their favorite sites, and then tags them (assigns each site a set of keywords) so that they'll turn up when you search. With social bookmarking, you'll learn how popular a Web sites is and get only results you know other users find useful or interesting.
Dulcinea's Insight
- This 2006 article on Read/WriteWeb, a prominent Web technology blog, compares and contrasts the top players in social bookmarking. There's a great chart that compares each site’s functionality and details their pros and cons.
- If you're still scratching your head about what social bookmarking is, watch this YouTube video. The video attempts to put social bookmarking in plain terms using Delicious as an example, though keep in mind that there are many alternatives.
- Social bookmarking sites occasionally have their own goofy terms for similar features or functions. For example, the act of voting/bookmarking a site on Digg is called "digging," whereas on Furl the same process is called “Furling.” Newsvine calls its recent headlines "seeds," contrasted with the standard "bookmarks" of Diigo and Delicious.
Dulcinea's Picks
Scholarly Resources Online
Most standard sources of information aren't adequate for academic purposes; what you need is the... read more»
How to Cite a Source
Almost all of the information you find on the Internet is copyrighted. All copyright and... read more»
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