Search Engines Corner ,Finding UK and European Resources on the Web

Tracey Stanley, Networked Information Officer ( Homepage)     (University of Leeds Library, UK)

Ariadne 1997
(ReLIS:doi:doiari:y:1997:i:11:p:20)

Abstract:

When searching the web, many people are keen to find ways of restricting their search to material based in the UK or Europe. The advantages of being able to get hold of such material can include the possible greater relevance to UK needs of material with a UK or European focus, speed of access to the information, and greater ability to focus a search on local topics such as news. A number of tools already exist for finding UK and European information on the web. Many of the eLib Information Gateways such as SOSIG and OMNI offer options which enable you to restrict your search of their database just to UK and European material. Other tools, such as Alta Vista, will enable you to restrict a search to UK material by adding the string url:uk to your search. For example, an Alta Vista search on +Oasis +url:uk will find documents about the group Oasis which have been published on UK web servers. This limits the search of the database to those documents which contain the word UK in their URL. However, this strategy can prove problematic as some documents which are based on UK web servers may not necessarily contain the word UK in their URLs (for example: the UK internet service provider ClaraNet which has the URL http://www.clara.net). A number of search engines have therefore been developed which offer a much more focused approach to searching the web for UK and European material. Some of these tools are enhancements of existing global search engines, whereas others are databases of purely UK or European material. This article reviews two services which offer searching for UK and European material - EuroFerret and Excite UK.

Keywords: From each article, you can move back and forth between articles written for the same column in other issues of Ariadne.
Note: In the Search Engines Corner for this issue, Tracey Stanley looks at how to keep your search results coming from within particular geographic areas. This article appears in the Web, and not the print, version of Ariadne.
Month: September 1997
Year: 1997

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