On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Margaret Harrison wrote:
> Kylie Purcell wrote:
>
> > On the contrary, I spent several hours sifting through useless links on
> > altavista using Handel and ornaments or Handel and bel canto as the search
> > keywords. It produced masses of information on Christmas ornaments which
> > wasn't exactly useful...
>
> > I certainly won't be using that search engine again.
>
> I've found on internet searches, it's a combination of search engine and
search strategy.
> My favorite search engine these days is http://www.google.com because it
most often turns
> up exactly what I need in the first few sites on the list. I probably would
try the
> search on baroque ornamentation (which should cut out the Christmas doodads)
or baroque
> singing.
I've found that using the "Advanced Search" function on AltaVista has been
very helpful, once I learned how to optimise my Boolean syntax.
Basically, the Advanced Search enables you to designate not only what you
are looking for, but also what you are not, by using a combination of AND
and AND NOT. The strategy that is most successful for me is to state the
primary keyword of my search, followed by AND and any secondary keyword,
followed by AND NOT and the keyword I *do not* want to turn up. This, in
combination with "" to enclose phrases rather than single words, so if I
were looking for information on Handel ornamentation, I would probably
enter:
Handel AND ornamentation AND soprano AND NOT "christmas
ornament"
I include "soprano" so that I'm more likely to turn up information about
vocal ornamentation rather than instrumental.
Actually, were I to make this query, I might actually start with "Baroque"
rather than "Handel" as my main keyword; that is, if I felt the subject I
really wanted was Baroque ornamentation in general, rather than Handellian
ornamentation in particular.
Anyway, you get the idea. The URL for the Alta Vista Advanced Search is:
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&what=web
It also allows you to enter sort criteria (by date, by precedence, etc.),
language (if you want to search only English, or French, or German sites),
and a range of dates, if you want to specify the timeframe in which the
information you're searching for was posted on the Net.
The reason I like AltaVista is this search engine seems to "spider" the
Web more often and more extensively than all the others. However I also
frequently do secondary searches with FAST (which gives you "all the
words", "any of the words", and "the exact phrase" options for basic
searching, and full Boolean logic for Advanced Searching:
http://www.ussc.alltheweb.com/
http://www.ussc.alltheweb.com/cgi-bin/advsearch?type=&query=
Also, two Web metasearch engines I've found helpful:
DogPile
http://www.dogpile.com
DogPile hits Looksmart, the Dogpile Web Catalog, GoTo.com, Dogpile Open
Directory, About.com, Google, Direct Hit, Infoseek, Lycos, RealNames,
Yahoo, and AltaVista.
And, Mamma.com, "The Mother of All Search Engines", which has an alleged
"power search" which is not much different than its basic search:
http://www.mamma.com/
Mamma.com hits Yahoo, GoTo.com, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Webcrawler, and
Altavista; but it doesn't allow you to use Boolean logic to narrow your
searches.
There's also one called MetaCrawler, but I haven't used it much:
http://www.metacrawler.com/index_metafind.html
Karen Mercedes
-----
Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt,
Der in den Zweigen wohnet;
Das Lied, das aus der Kehle dringt,
Ist Lohn, der reichlich lohnet.
-- J.W. von Goethe, WILHELM MEISTER
My NEIL SHICOFF Website:
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html
My Website:
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
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