Library libguides: The research process on the Extended Essay: Search Engines, Repositories, & Directories

Power Searching

This page gives suggestions for effective Internet searching using google, repositories, search engines, etc.

A different kind of search: University of Pennsylvania students looking for books in the library stacks in 1962 (Britannica ImageQuest)

Google

Google is obviously one of the best known search engines, but are you making full use of all the features Google offers? Find out more about how Google can be used from these help pages from Google Support:

Five Basic Search Tips from Google
Using Search Operators, Punctuation, and Symbols to Get More Specific Search Results
Finding Images, Videos, and Text That You Have Permission to Use
Filtering Your Results from Web Searches and Image Searches
Using Advanced Search When Looking for Websites or Images
Understanding the Different Parts of the Google Search Results Page

Try using Advanced Search in Google to improve the relevancy of the results you get:

Advanced Search for Websites
Advanced Search for Images

Try these specific searches in Google:

Google Books
Search the latest index of the world's books. Find millions of great books you can preview or read for free.
Google Earth
Satellite imagery, maps, and other geographic information allows you to view exotic locales like Maui and Paris, as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, hotels, and schools. With Google Earth you can fly from space to your neighborhood--just type in an address and zoom right in, search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions, tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings, save and share your searches and favorites.
Google Maps
Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions. Google Maps has It offers satellite imagery, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets, real-time traffic conditions, and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle, or public transportation.
Google News
Aggregates headlines from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together and displays them according to each reader's personalized interests.
Google Scholar
Search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Google Videos
Search millions of videos from across the web.

Search Engines

Search engines are programs that search documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. Web search engines, like Google, Bing and Yahoo!, enable users to search for documents on the Internet.

Typically, web search engines work by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its indices such that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each query.

Ask.com
A search engine focused on answering questions - personal and professional, easy and difficult, silly and serious. At th the best information from the web.
Bing
Bing search results are designed to be as accurate as possible. Users can narrow results to a specific region, country, or language. Other features include an image search, video search, news, maps, and a translator.
CiteSeerX
A scientific literature digital library and search engine that is focused primarily on the literature in computer and information science. CiteSeer indexes the full-text of the entire articles and citations. Full boolean, phrase and proximity search is supported.
DuckDuckGo
A search engine that does not track users or collect their personal information. Search for images, news, and places, and use 'Instant Answers' and '!Bang' for quick results to queries.
Yahoo!
Use Yahoo! to find relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web.

Meta Search Engines

Meta search engines are search engine tools that pass queries on to many other search engines and/or directories and then summarize all the results in one handy interface.

Dogpile
Dogpile returns all the best results from leading search engines. Dogpile looks at all of them, decides which are most relevant to your search, eliminates duplicates and reveals them to you.
Ixquick
Use Ixquick to search anonymously. Ixquick provides search results from over ten of the best search engines in full privacy.
Yippy
Yippy queries several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking. groups similar results together into “clouds.” This can help you see your search results by topic so you can zero in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items.

Web Repositories

A web repository is a central place in which an aggregation of data is kept and maintained in an organized way.

OpenDOAR
This service, based on the Google Custom Search engine, lets you search the contents of the repositories listed in OpenDOAR for freely available academic research information.

Search Directories

A search directory is a website in which links to information are organized by subject, and in alphabetical order, to make it easier for users to find the information they're seeking.

Directory of Open Access Journals
An online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals - over 10,000 journals (over 6,500 searchable at the article level), from 134 countries.
DMOZ
DMOZ is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. Supported by AOL, it is constructed and maintained by a global community of volunteer editors.