World Wide Web Searching for Dummies (1st ed)

If you've ever found yourself at a Web search engine wondering who the heck Boolean is and why he's bothering you when you're trying to get your research done, welcome to the book that will change all of that. The "For Dummies" series is almost uniformly excellent--despite the title. They claim to be "a reference for the rest of us"--the rest of us apparently includes people who need clear and simple language that is alternately reassuring, amusing and helpful. This approach to teaching people how to manage the information glut on the Web starts with some of the basics of searching, including how to define and use keywords, what the main Web directories offer, and more about the Boolean search criteria. The book then covers major search directories and engines such as Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, OpenText, AltaVista, Infoseek, Hotbot and DejaNews. Each of these directories has slightly different ways to define and refine searches, and this is a terrific round-up of how each of them operates. Hill then presents a discussion of how to search in various subject matter areas such as health, education, culture, news, entertainment, finances, sports and kid's interests. He also explores how to search for shareware or freeware files and how to do people-searching. The book closes with the traditional Dummies Part of Tens, including Ten Interesting Web Directories, Ten Reference Sites, Ten Tips for Fast Searching and Ten Great Web Magazines and Newspapers. The book includes a CD-ROM with software.