RESEARCH ON THE INTERNET for authors

Lunchtime Lecture

Jane Dorner, Author and Editor, on 30 March 2001

Jane Dorner is now a freelance writer, web designer, editor and speaker. She had a long career in publishing and has written 18 books and a wide portfolio of papers for scholarly journals. Jane initiated The Electronic Author, formerly published with their regular journal, The Author, by the Society of Authors. She is a Director of the Writing and Computers Association, and a committee member of the British Computer Society Electronic Publishing and Multimedia Specialist Group.

Jane Dormer discussed the sources of information that the Internet can and cannot replace. It is useful for factual information, textual and pictorial, and for classical texts that are out of copyright, but it cannot provide the intellectual and emotional stimuli provided by books, personal contacts and manuscript letters. Official Government documents and statistics, financial, marketing, legal and health information and encyclopaedias or dictionaries are prolific on the web. It cannot readily provide pre-19th century history, ranking lists for the entries it finds or synonym conversions.

She suggested that a good way to start searching for information on the Internet was to use one of the well-known `search engines' by inputting the words or subject sought. She recommended Google and/or AskJeeves.

In entering the question into the search engine care should be taken to consider carefully the keywords and phrases selected and, if necessary, to use the Boolean logic process with AND, OR, NOT connecting the words to sharpen the focus. For example, `flood* AND river AND UK NOT sea*' may obtain references to inland flooding in the UK more quickly than `floods' alone. The * represents any five letters so that flood* will include floods, flooding, floodplain, floodwater (but also floodlight).

If these search engines did not produce the desired result, after refining the words input to narrow the field of search, then the next step should be to consult specialist sources relevant to the topic sought. For instance, there were sources specific to academic and scientific subjects, more general works on-line such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica; and sites giving access to librarians, with some offering an answer on-line to specific queries without charge.

Other sites listed biographical details, news sources, and facts about Government and countries around the World. Some subject-sorted `gateways' listed popular and commercial subjects and disciplines, and links to other sites.

There were also sites offering direct access to the results from up to 500 search engines in one place; familiar quotations, and the opportunity to consult dictionaries and other reference works beyond the financial means of most individual in printed form.

Jane Dorner circulated a short document to the 30 people present, which was an extract from the section at the end of her recent book The Internet: A Writer's Guide (A & C Black, 2000) entitled "Online Resources". This document listed many of the information sources referred to in her talk and referred users to her web site (www.editor.net) for other useful references and help.

Jean Brushfield