Good evening! I’m Cindy Lu. On News 5 tonight-

Turns out the University of South Carolina has found hope for all those citizens who are stressed out with thousands of answers to their search

queries on the Web.

Barebones is what they call it and you can find it at the link provided below.

http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/bones.shtml

This tutorial offers basic knowledge on what are search engines, metasearchers, subject directories, and gateways. Search engines search only a portion of the web and are fairly useful because they help you find what you need by typing key words the only down fall is that search engines will return

all and anything with the words you input.

Metasearchers search the databases of several individual search engines and return the best results from each. Metasearchers come in hand when you are

running out of time for your search because they are known to be quick in gathering only the best for you.

Subject directories and gateways are created and maintained by professional individuals to deliver higher quality of content. So whether you are looking for information in general, in a hurry, or professional input try using any of

these to maximize your search.

You know what they say “Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet”. This is something that might come in handy. Click on evaluating website to see how trustworthy is a site. Learn how to interpret a URL and what each

domain stands for.

According to Barebones it is always important to find information on who created the website, how often is it updated, what the purpose of the website is and the sponsors for the link. This will help you determine whether you are

looking at a reliable site or not.

Ok, so here is an important one. Search strategies

This educational tutorial provides the names of 2 metasearchers and 5 search engines along with a description of each. Try taking a closer look at

each one to see which one is the one for you.

Don’t forget to browse the search engine graveyard, take a look at all the ones who tried but weren’t very successful. These include websites such as

AltaVista who are still out there but are no competition for Yahoo.

If you want to learn a little more about searching the Web tutorials, feel free to browse the Beyond Bare Bones section for additional tutorial sites.

In a moment, I'll be chatting to Dr. Mark Williamson and Dr. James Brian from the University of South Carolina about how this easy tutorial can change your

search experience.

But first we will be finding out what makes you so angry about not getting the results you want when you search the Web.

I hate that it doesn’t understand what I mean.

I don’t even try searching, I just call a friend.

I hate that there are times I have to type a whole sentence in order to get the result I need.

What I don’t like about searching is that I’m too old to sit around and read through all the data it bombards me with.

It’s funny when I see him in front of the computer trying to figure out what to type.

It drives me absolutely nuts when I type in something and the results turn out to be extremely inappropriate!

I hate that it lies! It says that there are 47,800,000 matches, when truly only about 756 are considered worth reading.

It makes me angry that the results keeping repeating the same Websites over and over again.

It sucks I can't find what I want and it forces me to go through hundreds of articles of what aren't even relevant to what I'm looking for! I’d be better off

asking my puppy.

He makes me happy!

Well there you have it folks.

Mark and James thank you both for joining me this evening.

Mark we would also like to know what makes you angry about searching the Web?

Well searching the Web really used to frustrate me since I was getting no where with the given results.

Like many people I did not know what search engines to use and I didn’t have a clue about what databases were.

Because I didn’t make time to do something about my search techniques I had to go through trial and error with plenty of frustration.

So basically you understand what these people are going through.

How about you, James, how do you feel?

I feel that this tool was presented to us with out a manual.

It was like hey here is this search box, type something in the box to get your answer.

But really who told us you couldn’t believe everything that was on the internet. It was until a couple of years ago that we started hearing about “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” Now you tell me!

So it was really frustrating to me that it was suppose to make our life easier but unless we attended some course on searching the Web or some type of

instruction for it we are lost.

Going back to what Mark said about not having enough time to improve his searching techniques- “How does this basic tutorial on searching the Web,

make the lives of most Americans less stressful?”

First of all the site is a quick tutorial that could be completed in less than 20 minutes. Read what you need and go on with your life.

There are terminologies that most people don’t understand such as search engines, meta search engines, subject directories, and databases.

If you can just take a couple of minutes and learn about what these things can do, then their purpose can better serve you.

I love that people go straight to Google or something similar to conduct a search but in reality there are all these great tools out there that are left unexplored because we don’t make the time to check out what they are.

Don’t you just hate it when the page displays a message such as 404- file not found or server error. You might also want to take a look at the

troubleshooting section where you will find answers to your frustration.

Another section which I consider vital within the search is checking for the reliability of the site. If you go over the section about evaluating Web pages

you will learn about the different indicators that will help you identify the reliability of the site.

What can you tell us about Google, Yahoo, Clusty, Ask and all these other search engines floating around?

I’m actually glad that we have a selection to choose from. They are all meant to help us find what we need. That is, if they are used appropriately.

For example Ask, Google, and Yahoo search their own subject directories. While Clusty and Dogpile search within several search engines and

directories.

In addition to that, the majority of the search engines or metasearchers support the basic Boolean operators. So that people don’t have to learn

different Boolean operator for each search engine.

These Boolean operators can simplify our search by so much. If you go to the section on Boolean Logic you can learn about some of these words and what

they can do for you.

For example if you search schools NOT teacher then the results will yield items dealing with schools and it will take out everything with the word

teacher. This makes your results more specific to what you are looking for.

Lots of interesting things, we will take that with us. Thanx you guys for joining us tonight.

There we have it. Make your search results pleasant by visiting the University of South Carolina Beaufort Library site for a quick and easy tutorial. This is

Cindy Lu, with Channel 5 news.