Kitsap Regional Library 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 website www.krl.org for class dates and times. Welcome to Internet 201 at Kitsap Regional Library. This ninety-minute lesson offers a more in-depth look at the Internet and World Wide Web. 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 databases) • 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 Sputnik 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 computer science 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 websites such as MapQuest or Google 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 Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Netscape. 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, web page 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 Search Engine to locate a web address. • Use a Web Directory to locate a collection of websites on a particular subject. • Use a Subscription database 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 Education 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 University of Minnesota. 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 algorithms. 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/ • Dogpile.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.