[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Small cities and towns do not always have the resources to do so.Generally, they cannot afford, nor have the space, to archive much information except that which is required by law.If you cannot find what you want at a city hall, go to the county or parish as your main regional source.Some private sources can be helpful.For example, the International City Management Association produces the Municipal Year Book.Page 69Using the WebFor those who have toiled long hours in libraries searching periodicals and books about a subject, the computer is the best thing that has come along since moveable type.Computerbased research using databases has been available for public use for more than a decade and promises to be the way to do some of your research.The hottest online resource for researchers is the Internet, a worldwide network of computers.It is a series of links of privately owned networks and computer systems.The Web is a part of that global computer network and uses the Internet to link users to server sites and documents.On the Web, a document is a collection of text information, hypertext, links, and more.Hypertext is a method of linking files or documents to other documents.Links are elements of the document that enhance the document.Links embellish documents through highlighted works, external and internal connections to other documents, tables of data, graphics, sound, and even video.Writers have embraced the Web as a valuable resource and use it often (Press, 1996a, 1996b).What makes the Web appealing to many users is its mix of tools and common base for transfer of information or data.The Web uses hypertext markup language to transfer information to software known as Web browsers—the most common ones are Netscape Communicator suite with its Navigator browser and Microsoft Internet Explorer.Web technology has advanced rapidly.Today's Web browsing includes transfer of text and graphics, but users with highspeed multimedia computers can also hear live audio and view live video.And, perhaps most valuable to many journalists, more public and private databases are being installed for Web access.One of the reasons the Web has become so popular is its ease of use.For most users, the Web is as simple as using a mouse and clicking on the options on the screen.The downside of all this is simple: users must follow the links and connections made by the developers of pages and sites on the Web.Although there are a lot of options, there is no complete freedom of movement on the Web unless you know specific addresses of sites and page paths.Web sites have newspaperlike front pages or magazinetype covers known as home pages.These are the first pages users see when they arrive at a site on the Web.Some browsers have default home pages, or locations that users automatically see when first using the browser, but these can be switched very easily.Many home pages use index, homepage, or similar terms in the URL to identify themselvesPage 70to users.A Web site, in contrast, is the entire set of pages for a particular Web address.A Web page is a single document within a site.There are several hundred million pages—and billions of words—on the Web, so finding useful information on deadline is one of the biggest challenges to feature writers using the Internet.Unless users know a particular location, fast information retrieval is often difficult.However, a number of search and/or indexing tools have recently evolved on the Web that list resources by topic or search through registered Web sites with key words, or do both.The big four engines were—in descending order of daily traffic in 1997—Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com), Excite (http://www.excite.com), Infoseek (http://www.infoseek.com), and Lycos (http://www.lycos.com).Each seeks to be a package of searching services for users, covering general searches, specialty searches, and advanced searches.These four sites generated a combined total of more than 65 million daily page views while still losing considerable money.Yahoo!is widely used among beginners because of its ease in use.Excite appeals to specialists, or expert searchers, because of its query tools and relevance ratings.Infoseek is appealing to beginners because of its ease of use and its wide range of specialty searches.Lycos has established a base of users because of its variety of content that includes indexes, people finding, stock information searches, and general search tools.Another popular search engine is HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com).HotBot has a database of pages large enough to compete with the big four and offers speed, usability, and a wide range of customizable advanced search options that can be saved for later use.AltaVista (altavista.com) is still another popular search tool that is well established.It breaks down search results and uses advanced searches based on Boolean operators [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]