Searching The World!

The World-Wide Web (web) contains a vast wealth of information.
All you need to tap into this font of knowledge:
- Access to the Internet
- A web browser such as Netscape Navigator, NCSA Mosaic, or
  Microsoft Internet Explorer
Surfing the web to find what you want is "easy."
Some sites allow you to search their pages.
- For example, search the Maryland Sea Grant web site for green crabs.
If you don't know the site's the uniform resource locator (URL),
you can use a "global" search engine.
- See http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/~jacobs/SearchIt/search.htm for some popular sites.
Characteristics of these search engines:
- Most use boolean logic - AND, OR, NOT
- Some allow you to search for a phrase
  (either by using "phrase" or selecting phrase on the search form)
- You can expand the search using a wildcard (*)
  fish* - find all pages that contain at least one word such as fish, fishing,
  fishery, fisheries, fisherman, . . .
- You can restrict the search:
  +item - a page must contain this word or phrase
  -item - a page cannot contain this word or phrase
See for yourself how easy it is and try the "Searching the World Scavenger Hunt"
located at http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/~jacobs/SearchIt/hunt.htm.

Searching The World!
Prepared by Dan Jacobs
Maryland Sea Grant