Researching on the Internet

The Internet delivers primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. You can interact with experts in Webinars, social media, interactive Q&A pages, and so on—all primary sources. You can find high-quality secondary sources of information, too—articles, essays, or audio-visual materials. And you will encounter numerous tertiary sources within sites, pages, and postings. Judge Internet sources for their quality before using them in your research. Use your best reading and thinking skills and compare multiple sources to build a complete picture. (See pages 376–377.)

Special Research Sources

A general search engine isn’t always the best place to start. Consider one of these gateways instead:

• The Library of Congress offers a wide variety of online texts, photos, and recordings, many of historical significance, that can serve as primary resources.
• National and state governments provide research sites to help you learn about a variety of topics. Examples include USA.gov (check its A-Z index of departments and agencies), NASA.gov, and CIA.gov (especially “The World Factbook”).
• The Internet Public Library at ipl.org provides an entryway to information.
• Your local library system is another link to both area library resources and recommended Internet resources. (Check with your librarian or visit your library’s Web site to see what is available.)
• EBSCO, ProQuest, and other such companies offer subscription-based access to searchable databases of periodical articles. For scholarly research of secondary sources, these databases are often the best starting point. Many school and public libraries have subscriptions to such services.
• OverDrive, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others provide many books to library-lending programs. Check with your local librarian to learn more.

Surface Web and Deep Web

The Web is a virtual soup of different technologies, creating some special challenges for search engines. It means that not everything online is easily found. You can increase your chances of locating the best material in the shortest time by understanding the difference between the “surface Web” and the “deep Web” (often called the “invisible Web”).

Surface Web

The “surface Web” is what’s readily available to you, and everyone else, through search engines and advertised Web addresses. The only difficulty here is learning to separate high-quality resources from dubious ones. Think of the “surface Web” as the face of an ocean, readily visible in all directions.

Deep Web

The “deep Web” is material that has not been indexed by search engines, but is available to you—if you know where to look. Many community message boards, educational wikis, and government databases (such as a job-search site) fall into the “deep Web” category. Such material has not been indexed for various reasons: Often, pages on these sites don’t actually exist until you request them, and they vanish afterward. In other instances, password authorization or CAPTCHA verification may block search-engine robots, or Web designers have inserted a “no robot” code. So while a search engine cannot index a site’s information, you can visit the site and find the information yourself. Think of the “deep Web” as the ocean depths; if you know where to dive, you’ll find treasure.