Unit 8

Internet Public Library (IPL2)

“The Internet Public Library, (IPL), is a merged collection of sites from the Internet Public Library and the Librarian's Index to the Internet. The combination of the two is better that both.”[1]

There is a subject directory, newspapers and magazine, for kids, and for teens directories and special collections created by ipl2. Unfortunately I was able to open only for kids and for teens, the rest leads to blank pages. May be they are still working on the directories.

Search Options the IPL provide:

Wildcard Characters (?,*): ? used to represent one alphanumeric character within a term.  * is used to represent zero or more alphanumeric characters.

Boolean Operators must be capitalized. Used additionally + (Must be)and  -  (NO)sings

Range Searches [1977 TO 2022] – include data; {} – exclude data

Advances Features: Boosting (add importance to a specific term or group of term)^.

                                                Bear^2Tiger^3

Proximity Searches: (to see if two terms are within a specified distance of each other in an article. ~

                                                “Bear Zoo”~6

Fuzzy Searching: modifies how closely a given search term must be matched within the returned results. The default Fuzzy value is 0.5. It is complicated. I don’t like it.

                                                Bear~0.99 is likely only to return such items as Bear and Bears

I would use this search tool for academic research as the sources supposed to be trusted, as they claim and advanced features give more chances to find something worthful. Especially it would be useful for kids, teens, students, and teachers.

Ixquick Metasearch

“Ixquick is a comprehensive metasearcher that queries 14 search tools. Results are ranked by relevancy with information about which search tool the site came from. Ixquick allows keyword searches, natural language searches, and advanced Boolean searches. Pages found in multiple engines are only listed once and ranked by relevancy. Ixquick also has a language feature to for searching non-English sites. Specialized searching includes images, news, and MP3.”[2]

Search options:

Boolean operators are the same as everywhere but must be capitalized. AND OR NO.

Additionally you can use “+” (must be) and “-“ NO

Phrases in quotes, and parentheses can be used.

Fields: you can specify where certain information must appear with fields: +title; +domain; host; site; url; link.

There are many fields to narrow or expand your search: with all the words; with the exact phrase; with at least one of the words, etc.

Duck Duck Go

“Duck Duck Go is a search tool that compiles searches from other sources but maintains the privacy of a searcher by not logging user information. Results are populated by sites that have less advertising and better content.”[3]

They use AND or OR operators but not NO. Instead of NO “-“ sign works to exclude the term.

“” marks around the phrases are used for exact matches on that phrase.

They use \ to go directly to the first search result

They do safe search by default. If you want to turn off safe search for this search, add   !safeoff

There is a good collection of “Goodies” For example:!bang syntax:

                                 !youtube green day can lead you directly to youtube website

You can do any calculation and conversions directly in Goodies; find the date of any event or what happened on the date; the links to any well-known fact; even to count the calories or learn about nutrition in a product; geography facts and language tips.

I bookmarked this site and will use it in future. It is good for every day needs.

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[1] http://hanlib.sou.edu/searchtools/subjdir.html

[2] http://hanlib.sou.edu/searchtools/metatool.html

[3] http://hanlib.sou.edu/searchtools/srchtool.html