You can click on the following search engines and use them straight away. If you would prefer to learn a little more about the different types of search engine and find the one that is most suitable for your work click the quick tutorial link.
If you would like to learn to use the Internet more effectively the Intute Virtual Training Suite provides free Internet tutorials to help you. The tutorials are written and updated by a team of subject specialists based in universities and colleges across the UK. Click the list of tutorials and then chose the one that interests you.
The search engine most frequently used by library staff. Before you start using Google bear these two points in mind:
- Clicking the "pages from the UK" box before you start will greatly speed up the response time of your search.
- If your search yields too many results to look at go to the bottom of the first page of results and click "search within results". Then type in a second keyword and Google will search through your list of results looking for the new keyword. This will narrow down the list of results that you have to look through. If your second list of results is still too large you can repeat the process continually until you have a manageable list to work with.
Ask Jeeves
Jeeves is a popular search engine because you do not have to type in specific keywords, you can type a straightforward question in plain English and the search engine will suggest a number of sites which will try to answer it for you.
Yahoo!
Yahoo! also has the facility to search just in the United Kingdom. Because the sites that Yahoo! searches are organised into a directory you can choose to search only in "Science" or "Health" or "Humanities" for example and this usually speeds up your searches.
Kartoo
A new style of search engine which presents results in a graphic format; especially useful if you want a change from pages of printed information. An excellent feature is that as you move the mouse pointer round the screen of results a thumbnail description of each site is given. There is just enough information to let you judge whether or not to visit the whole site.
Dogpile
A directory as well as a search engine. Has a useful "yellow pages" section and a facility to search for images, audio or multi-media "documents".
Altavista
Another very well known and popular search engine. Alta Vista includes a directory as well as a search engine and it has useful facilities to search for images, MP3/Audio or video clips. Possible to search U.K. only or Worldwide and the site includes sophisticated advanced searching facilities.
Metacrawler
Searches a number of other search engines for you and also gives clear, simple tips on searching. A neat and uncluttered page.
Gigablast
A simple, clear search page very similar to Google.
Bubl
A catalogue of 12,000 high-quality, selected internet resources covering all academic subject areas. The catalogue is arranged very much like a library and it is possible to search using standard Dewey Classification numbers.
Northernlight
Easy to use search engine, especially useful for business, finance and economics.
Search Engine Watch
Contains everything that you could possibly want to know about search engines. Includes Search Engine Listings, Web Searching Tips, Glossary of Terms, Boolean Logic etc. The site also has particularly useful tables showing the conventions adopted or supported by different search engines; ie. do they use +, -, " " etc. in their search logic.