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Kitsap Regional

Internet 201 Handout

To register for computer training at Kitsap Regional Library please call your local branch:

Bainbridge: 206-842-4162 Downtown Bremerton: 360-377-3955 Kingston Library: 360-297-3330 Little Boston: 360-297-2670 Manchester: 360-871-3921 Port Orchard: 360-876-2224 Poulsbo: 360-779-2915 Silverdale Library: 360-692-2779 Sylvan Way: 360-405-9100 or Toll-Free 1-877-883-9900

Visit the KRL www.krl.org for class dates and times.

Welcome to 201 at Kitsap Regional Library. This ninety-minute lesson offers a more in-depth look at the Internet and . Students enrolled in this class will:

• understand and use the components of the Internet browser • learn different Web searching strategies using Search Engines and Web Directories • practice using KRL’s Electronic Resources (subscription ) • understand Internet Security issues

The Internet can be used for many different purposes: to locate information, communicate, manage finances, purchase goods and services, or simply to be entertained by music, movies and games. The full capacity of what can be achieved using the Internet is of course dependent upon the technology included or added to a computer.

Historical Timeline of the Internet

1957 - Creation of ARPA under the Department of Defense. President Eisenhower responds to the Soviets’ successful launch of by creating the Advanced Research Projects Agency under the Department of Defense.

1969 - Creation of ARPAnet as the precursor to the Internet. First data package was sent successfully on ARPAnet from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute.

1983 - ARPAnet merged with NSFNet & the “Internet” emerges. The National Science Foundation constructs a university network that linked academic departments.

1990 - Creation of the World Wide Web. British computer scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, develops the hypertext system that allows documents to be linked easily to one another.

1995 - The NSFNet network is now open to commercial interests.

2006 - Where are we today? 73% of American adults use the Internet. This percentage represents about 147 million people. Pew Internet & Life Project February – April 2006 Survey http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_4.26.06.htm

The top activities for which people use the Internet:

• e-mail • search engines to find information • driving directions – map such as MapQuest or Maps • look for info on a hobby or interest • health & medical info • product or service research • check the weather

Pew Internet & Life Project http://www.pewinternet.org/trends.asp CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008

Internet Browser: Beyond the Basics

The most popular Internet Browsers today are , , and . Typically a browser is included with the software that accompanies each new computer. Browsers can also be downloaded off the Web for free.

An Internet Browser typically contains five bars – four at the top of the screen and the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen.

1. Title Bar: indicates the browser name, title, Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons. 2. Address Bar: Indicates the URL (address) of website currently being viewed. Place for a searcher to type in a web address to access a webpage. 3. Menu Bar: Textual menus with sub menus: File, Edit, View, Favorites, Tools, & Help. 4. Tool Bar: Icons or graphical buttons displaying commands: Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh, Favorites, and Print. 5. Status Bar: Displays information about the window currently being viewed.

Title Bar Address Bar Menu Bar Tool Bar

Status Bar

CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008 Web Navigation & Searching Strategies

There are several ways to access information on the World Wide Web once connected to the Internet:

• Enter a Web Address into the browser address bar. • Use a to locate a web address. • Use a to locate a collection of websites on a particular subject. • Use a Subscription to locate documents not available on the free web.

Web Addresses

Web addresses are advertised in all types of media. When you see or hear an advertisement for a specific product or company you will often see or hear its web address as well. Make a mental note of its Domain Name Extension – this is the extension that follows the identity of the website, such as the .org in www.krl.org.

Common Domain Name Extensions are: .com, .gov, .edu, .net, .mil, .org. Be aware of who is responsible for the web site or web page. Government, Military, and domain name extensions are restricted and reserved for websites that belong in those categories.

Note that sometimes the Tilde (~) will be represented within a web address. The tilde is a key found on the keyboard (upper left corner) and when used in a website address, usually designates a personal website. The page associated with this web address -- http://www.tc.umn.edu/~pmg/genealogy.html -- was published by a student at the . While the address ends in an .edu, it is a student who is actually responsible for the information on the web page, not the university.

Search Engines

A search engine is a tool that allows a person to search for websites by keyword(s) rather than by a web address. Typically a person will use a search engine when they do not know the address of a particular website. The concept is similar to searching for a company in the yellow pages rather than the white pages of a phone book.

Search engines are also websites. You must know the web address of a search engine in order to use it. From the home page of a search engine a searcher will enter keywords into a search box and then ask the search engine to “search” for websites that match the keywords entered. Search engines use “crawler-based technology” to match keywords with websites that have been indexed under those keywords by the search engine. The crawler-based technology relies on “computer spiders” to locate matching text using carefully engineered .

Two popular search engines used today are: Google www.google.com Yahoo www.yahoo.com

CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008 To access these search engines from the library’s home page, click on KRL Resources then choose Search the Web OR just type their web address into the address bar of the browser. Below are some tips for using search engines.

• Keywords: Choose your keywords carefully. A searcher has the ability to broaden or limit the number of results returned in a search depending upon which keywords are entered. Adding additional terms to a search is the simplest way of getting more accurate results. For example: newspapers washington bremerton will narrow your search results to just newspapers in Bremerton, Washington.

• Stop Words: Common words like a, and, an, are, as, at, be, by, for, in, is, it, of, on, the, to, this, and was are not typically recognized by the search engine during a search. These words are referred to as Stop Words and there is no need to include these words in a search phrase when using a search engine.

• Quotation Marks: When searching for a specific title, song lyric, or line of poetry, surround the phrase with quotation marks. The quotation marks ensure that the results contain the exact phrase rather than results for each separate word.

• Advanced Search: The Advanced Search feature on a search engine also helps a searcher clarify and narrow the search results. In an advanced search, one can search by exact phrase, date range, specific language, document type, or even domain extension. The advanced search features are not typically found on the home page of a search engine; you must click on the link titled Advanced Search to bring up these options.

Try the following example using Google’s (www.google.com ) advanced search feature: next to Find Results, enter the search terms Mount Saint Helens. Next to Domain enter the extension .edu. Your results will contain only educational websites (.edu) with Mt. Saint Helens as a keyword.

Search Engine Wars: There are many different search engines available on the Web. Each offers a different search technology and the companies who own these technologies are careful not to reveal the secrets behind their algorithms. The search engine Google has risen to the top as one that returns a high percentage of relevant and accurate results. There are other search engines that also provide their own unique twist to searching. Note the following examples:

• Ask.com – enter your question in natural language into the search field http://www.ask.com/ • Yahoo.com – a search engine, directory, and portal. Primary competitor to Google and also very popular. http://www.yahoo.com/ • .com – searches several search engines at once http://www.dogpile.com/ • Complete Planet www.completeplanet.com: a search engine focused on searching the Hidden Web. “Discover over 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines.” • Cranky.com http://cranky.com: The first age-relevant search engine – for the flip side of Fifty!

CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008

Web Directories

Web Directories serve a different purpose from search engines and should not be overlooked; they are excellent resources for information. Web directories are created and organized by “human editors” which means the web pages have gone through an evaluation process before being published in a directory. These web pages are organized by categories with each category having sub-categories. A searcher is able to work his way down to a specific website by clicking through the category lists. Web directories also provide search boxes that allow users to search for specific websites rather than drill down through the many levels of categories.

To aid you in your search for information on the web, the librarians at Kitsap Regional Library have put together several web directories. Links to the following directories can be found on the KRL Home Page under the following categories on the library’s home page:

KRL Resources Adults Research Corner – categories include Movie and Music Lovers – music and business, genealogy, legal, history movie contents, reviews and awards Find Local Information – categories Small Business Tools – Federal, state, include government, museums, and county resources entertainment Search the Web – search engines, Readers’ Corner – best seller lists, , online encyclopedias, & blogs classics, readers’ advisory, & book clubs

Below are some popular web directories found on the web: Librarians Internet Index http://lii.org/ Internet Public Library http://ipl.org/ Google Directory http://www.google.com/dirhp Yahoo Directory http://search.yahoo.com/ (then click on link to directory) DMOZ Directory http://www.dmoz.org/

Utilizing Web Searching History

Storing your favorite web pages for future use:

The Internet browser provides a tool that allows a user to save and organize his favorite web pages. This tool in Internet Explorer is called Favorites and in Mozilla Firefox it is called Bookmarks. Both work essentially the same way.

• When viewing a web page that you would like to save, click on Favorites or Bookmarks in the toolbar, then Add to Favorites (Internet Explorer) or this Page (Mozilla Firefox). The web page will be stored in the Favorites list.

• To organize these web pages into folders, click on Organize Favorites (Internet Explorer) or Manage Bookmarks (Mozilla Firefox) then Create a Folder. From your Favorites list, click and drag your favorite websites into their respective folders. CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008

* Note Favorites is not available for use on the library computers. However, the website http://del.icio.us offers the ability to store your favorites (bookmarks) permanently in one safe place. To use del.icio.us you must create a user ID and password. Once you have created an account, you can continue to add to and organize your favorites again and again.

Session History

The address bar in the browser captures recent web searching history. Because the browser remembers (saves) web addresses, you’ll find that when you begin to type an address that you’ve already typed into the address bar, the dropdown menu of the address bar will open and provide choices of addresses from which to choose. Clicking on an address from this list will take you to that web page and save you from having to retype the entire address in the address bar.

To view the list of your recent search history, click on the small arrow located to the right of the address bar. In the section on Extended History learn how to erase this history.

Extended History

The Internet browser also keeps an Extended History of web sites visited. This history can go back several weeks and is useful to refer to when searching for a specific website already visited.

To View History: • In Internet Explorer - choose VIEW from the menu bar, then EXPLORER BAR, then History. • In Firefox - choose GO from the menu bar, then History.

To Erase History: • In Internet Explorer - choose TOOLS from the menu bar then INTERNET OPTIONS. Click on the Delete button in the History section. • In Firefox - choose TOOLS from the menu bar then OPTIONS. Click on the Clear button next to History.

The Free Web versus the Hidden Web

Resource Credibility Information can be found in a variety of different places on the Web. How does a searcher know which information is the most reliable? One strategy for verifying credibility is to look in more than one place and compare resources. Think about the different resources available and choose the one that makes the most sense to start with. Most of us are aware of the free Web but did you know that there is something called the hidden Web as well?

• The Free Web: that portion of the World Wide Web that is indexed by conventional search engines, such as Google or Yahoo, and made up of pages that can be linked to one another. These pages can be accessed without logging into a site or paying a fee. CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008

• The Hidden Web: that portion of the World Wide Web that is invisible to conventional search engines. The content of most of these sites comes from specialized databases. These sites block conventional search engines from browsing or indexing their content. Access to the information within these sites usually requires registration or a subscription. The hidden web is thought to be much larger than the free web.

With your library card, you can access information stored on the sites not available to the free Web. These resources are available in the library’s Electronic Resources – to access them, click on KRL Resources then Electronic Resources.

KRL’s Electronic Resources

Subscription Databases These databases are filled with millions of full text articles found in authoritative sources such as newspapers, professional journals and . The information found in these databases is not available on the free web; KRL subscribes to these valuable resources and a library card provides access to the information.

Organization of KRL’s Electronic Resources page:

• The databases are organized by category and then alphabetically in the right menu. • The center column provides a brief description of each database – these are organized by category.

Online Journals, Magazines and Newspapers

¾ To search for a specific publication, start by clicking on Online Journals, Magazines and Newspapers located at the top of the Electronic Resources page. Enter the publication title in the search box (or click on a letter in the alphabetical list) to locate which database provides full text articles within the publication. Click on the database to locate specific issues of the publication. From your home computer you will need to enter your library card number to access the database.

Magazines, Newspapers and Journals

¾ To search for full-text articles and citations from a variety of publications, click on the category Magazines, Newspapers, and Journals then choose the database Electric Library. Remember, from home you will have to enter your library card number. Enter your keywords into the search box. Each of the results returned will list the citation information for the article (author, title, issue #....)

Reference USA

¾ This database is a telephone directory of & Canada. It provides business & residential information. To search this database, CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008 choose Telephone Directories from the categories listed in the right menu. Click on the link to Reference USA. From the Reference USA home page open the drop-down menu titled Select a Database to Search then choose Residential. Search for a family member of friend!

Reading Recommendations

¾ The database Novelist is one of two databases the library offers that provides readers’ advisory. Novelist covers fiction and What do I Read Next provides information on fiction and non-fiction. To access these databases, choose Reading Recommendations from the categories listed in the right menu then choose a database. Search within these databases by author, title, series, plot, or browse genre lists.

*For a more detailed lesson on these databases ask a staff person at one of the Information desks.

Internet Security

It’s wise to be cautious about security when using the Internet. The following websites offer guidelines for Internet users.

American Bar Association Security Tips http://www.safeshopping.org/security.shtml

National Cyber Security Alliance http://www.staysafeonline.info/

Safe Shopping – tips from the American Bar Association http://www.safeshopping.org/ Become a smarter, safer online shopper using these tips.

Protect your personal information:

• Do not reply to an e–mail or a pop–up message that asks for personal or financial information. • When sharing confidential information, look for the padlock symbol in the lower right corner of the web page and the “https://” denotation in the web page address. This designates a secure site and means that information will be encrypted for your protection. • Don’t open e–mail attachments from unknown senders. To be safe, delete e-mail from unknown sources, without opening the e-mail. • Don’t click on any link in an unexpected message.

Establishing passwords:

• Use a combination of letters and numbers, even special characters if they’re allowed. They need to be easy to remember, but not something that can be guessed such as names, words, dates. CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008 • Change passwords regularly. • Don’t share your passwords. • Use different passwords for each site, or follow a tiered approach, using 3-5 passwords: • Most secure for banking • Least secure for public forums • Levels in between as needed

Keyboard Shortcuts

Many computer users prefer using keyboard shortcuts over the mouse when at all possible. There are several reasons for this, the most common being that keyboard shortcuts can save time, require less effort than manipulating the mouse, and provide individuals who have difficulties moving the mouse with another alternative.

Keyboard shortcuts vary depending upon the application in use. Some will work in one application but not in another. It requires repetition to memorize these shortcuts. Practice the shortcuts listed below in a variety of situations and watch what happens!

Modifier Keys

Many shortcuts rely on Modifier Keys. The Alt and Control keys are modifier keys. When pressed at the same time as another key, they give that key a new meaning depending upon the specific program running. In the Menu Bar of the browser you will find these keyboard shortcuts listed next to their textual commands.

Ctrl n opens a new browser window Alt + Home Key is same as home icon Ctrl w closes a browser window Ctrl f finds a word/phrase on a page Alt + left arrow same as back button Ctrl p opens the print dialog box Alt + right arrow same as forward button Ctrl c copies highlighted text F5 refreshes the page Ctrl v pastes text into another place

Congratulations!

You have successfully completed Internet 201. We hope you found the class informative and helpful. To best retain the skills you learned today we strongly recommend you practice on a regular basis. Attached you’ll find a practice sheet with several exercises to give you an opportunity to practice what we covered in today’s lesson. Remember, the staff at the information desk at each KRL branch is happy to answer further questions and provide additional assistance should you need help.

For Further Questions… Information found under the Ask a Librarian link, located on the library’s home page in the right menu, provides library patrons with the opportunity to ask reference librarians questions through email as well as a link to a list of Frequently Asked Questions.

CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008 Resources: Tips and Tutorials

Better Business Bureau - BBBonline Programs Reliability & Privacy Seals http://www.bbbonline.org/business/

GCF Global Learning – Free tutorials http://www.gcflearnfree.org/Tutorials/

Pew Internet & American Life Project Latest Trends http://www.pewinternet.org/trends.asp

University at Albany Internet Tutorials http://library.albany.edu/internet/

Practice Examples

Skill One: Search Engines - searching strategies

Using Keywords: Using Google (www.google.com) enter zoo Note how many pages are found by the search engine Now add the word washington (zoo washington) Note that fewer pages are found Now add the word seattle (zoo seattle washington) Note that even fewer pages are found

Advanced Search: Using Google’s advanced search page (http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en ) do a search on peanut butter in the past 3 months with only .gov domains -- Note how the results are confined to those specific parameters.

Skill Two: Web Directories

Web Directory: Go the Librarian’s Index to the Internet (www.lii.org). Click on the category to “Computers” then choose the sub-category “Buying Computers.”

Go to www..org and choose a category of your interest and search down to find websites that cover pertinent material.

CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008 Skill Three: Free Web vs. Hidden Web

Use Google www.google.com to find Consumers Report website. (Enter the words Consumers Report in the engine search box). Click on the link to Digital Cameras, then the link to Ratings. Will the site allow you access to the information? Where else could you go to find this information? Hint: Use the library’s Electronic Resources and do a publication search.

Skill Four: KRL’s Electronic Resources

These subscription databases cover many areas of interest – medical, home, literature, magazines, etc.

1. Go to the KRL home page (www.krl.org) • Click on Electronic Resources • Click on Titles in Online Journals, Magazines and Newspapers • Search for the title: Wall Street Journal • Click on the database National Newspapers • Open the newest issue of the Wall Street Journal

2. Go back to Electronic Resources on the KRL home page • Click on Magazines, Newspapers and Journal Articles • Click on the database Proquest • Do a basic search on Pluto

3. Go back to Electronic Resources on the KRL home page • Click on Reading Recommendations • Click on Novelist • Click on Browse Lists tab then Explore Fiction>Adults • Explore any of the genres of interest to you

Skill Five: Keyboard Shortcuts

Visit KRL’s website click on “Local Information.” Then use the following:

• Ctrl F to find “Kitsap Sun” • Alt Å go back to KRL Home page (where you started) • Alt Æ go forward to local information • Alt Home to return once again to KRL Home page (where you started) www.krl.org

Other Sample search exercises

• Research information about a prescription drug someone in the family uses (hint – in KRL Electronic Resources you can search the Health Information section (http://www.krl.org/Find%20Information/electronic_resources.htm#Health)

CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008

• Search for a new novel to read (hint – in KRL Electronic Resources you can search NoveList or What Do I Read Next for reading recommendations. (http://www.krl.org/Find%20Information/electronic_resources.htm#Reading)

• Check out the online price of an air ticket to Hawaii (hint – you can use www.expedia.com to find this kind of information)

• Check out the price of a new washing machine, lawnmower or water heater (hint – among many retailers you could check out www.homedepot.com)

• Genealogy – look up a census record of an ancestor (hint – you can use the KRL Electronic Resources database HeritageQuest Online from home http://www.krl.org/Find%20Information/electronic_resources.htm#Genealogy

CLICK! Kitsap Regional Library January 2008