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Welcome to the Purdue OWL News!
This is an online newsletter about happenings in the Purdue University Writing Lab and the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). We are always glad to hear from you at owlnews@owl.english.purdue.edu!
Hereês our grammar question of the week, brought to you by the Online Writing Lab Tutors here at Purdue.
Question: Are all search engines the same? What is a "metasearch engine"? Our teacher said we had to use a metasearch engine, and I've never heard that term before.
Hereês the answer. Great question! Not all search engines are the same. Some do better with different areas of interest, some divide their findings in categories, while some list their findings in order of popularity. If you want to be a savvy web surfer, you'll want to familiarize yourself with the different search engines and find the one that works best for you.
A metasearch engine is a search engine that searches search engines. Some common ones include dogpile and metacrawler. But even the best search engine covers only about 16% of the web, so it's good to know other ways of finding what you're looking for. For more help with search engines, look here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_websearch2.html
Got a question about some aspect of your writing? Want some advice about a persistent issue that crops up every time you compose? Send the OWL News staff an email at owlnews@owl.english.purdue.edu and we will feature them in our newsletter!
Searching the World Wide Web can be both beneficial and frustrating. You may find vast amounts of information, or you may not find the kinds of information you're looking for. Recent studies indicate that search engines index about 16% of the total content on the Web and that they are biased toward well known information. Moreover, the content on search engines is usually at least several months old.
So, using search engines is not the only way to find material on the web, but they are one tool you can use. Knowing a few search strategies and hints, as you use these engines, can make the search more profitable.
We have put together a handout that lists different kinds of search engines, gives tips for doing an effective search, explains Boolean operators, and offers other useful information. You can find that handout here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_websearch2.html
Help us make the OWL more useful for you! Send us your favorite writing-related, learning-related and teaching related-links for inclusion in our Internet resources section. To submit links, please send mail to link@owl.english.purdue.edu.
Our Maymester tutors, Brian Yothers and Maryse Jayasuriya, are waiting for you to drop in and see them about all your writing needs. Theyêre also available to give tours of the Writing Lab, offer workshops if youêre teaching a class, or help you find reference material or handouts for yourself or your students.
Thanks for reading our newsletter, and please email us any suggestions you might have! We really enjoy hearing from our readers. You can mail us at any time at owlnews@owl.english.purdue.edu. You can also email the OWL coordinator, Geoff Stacks, at coordinator@owl.english.purdue.edu and the webmaster, Erin Karper, at webmaster@owl.english.purdue.edu. (Erin and Geoff take turns writing the newsletter.)
Tell your friends about the Purdue OWL News! They can sign up to receive this newsletter by visiting http://purdueowlnews.listbot.com and entering their email address.
If you want to unsubscribe from the newsletter, just visit http://purdueowlnews.listbot.com and follow the instructions to unsubscribe.
This newsletter is copyright (c) 2001 the Purdue University Writing Lab and Purdue University.
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