In the 12 years since the first edition of this title, the Internet has revolutionized our lives. Following a lively introduction from Deep Web guru Gary Price, each chapter of this fourth edition explores a different aspect of the Internet. Chapters typically cover useful background information, as well as strategies and tips for finding and making the most effective use of relevant sites, resource guides and selected sites which aim to be both valuable and representative.
Chapter 1, Basics for the Serious Searcher, incorporates a useful if brief history of the Internet before outlining search tools and content on both the Internet and the Deep Web. This wide-ranging chapter explores when to use a search engine or a directory, how to assess quality of content and how to keep up-to-date in an ever-changing world.
The second chapter explores some of the best directories and portals, including the long-running Cyndi's list for genealogy, refdesk and infomine. In Chapters 3 and 4, the author looks at the basics and specifics of search engines. The author considers many useful search techniques including: phrase searching; title searching; URL, site and domain searching; link searching; language searching; limiting by date – with appropriate caveats about the true nature of the “last updated”information; file type; and the librarian's favourite, Boolean. As well as Internet search giant Google, this chapter also incorporates relatively new web search options like Bing and Blekko, as well as some which have vanished into the mists of the World Wide Web like Hotbot, Lycos, Altavista and Alltheweb. This chapter also describes new visualization search engines like TouchGraph and Quintura.
Chapter 5 explores some of the precursors of the social web: discussion groups, forums, newsgroups, mailing lists and other related resources. One of the major strengths of the Internet has always been its function as a portable reference library: Chapter 6 looks at this Internet Reference Shelf in detail. Although focused very much on the United States of America, this chapter outlines encyclopaedias and dictionaries, directories of addresses and phone numbers, weather sites and gazetteers, among others.
Audio-visual resources merit three chapters of their own, covering sights and sounds, finding images, audio and video. The final chapter, Your Own Place on the Web: Participating and Publishing, looks at some of the shared spaces and social media opportunities to build blogs and the social networking sites which have also changed the way we communicate, including Facebook, Flickr and WordPress.
This compact yet comprehensive work covers an extraordinarily wide selection of resources. The work also features a very useful glossary and there is a list of URLs by chapter. The index is detailed and easy to use. Text is divided up with clear headings and subheadings, and this very technical topic is divided into manageable paragraphs and sections that helpfully avoid wordiness yet deliver huge amounts of information. Very technical concepts are explained in straightforward English and chapters are illustrated with clear images, primarily screenshots. There is also an accompanying website, www.extremeresearcher.com
Overall, this sensibly priced title offers an excellent starting point for exploring or teaching the Internet. It would make a useful addition to collections featuring information management, information literacy and information retrieval.
