Government/Democracy/Philosophy
American Forces Press Service --Searchable database of articles written for the AFPS. Excellent source for current information on U.S. foreign relations, and the political and military standings of many countries. Database goes back to January 1997, and is updated daily. (K. Hess)
Center for Democracy and Technology --"CDT is a nonprofit public interest organization based in Washington, D.C. CDT works for public policies that advance civil liberties and democratic values in new computer and communications technologies." (K. Magarrell) Institute for Global Communications --Homepage of the Institute for Global Communications -- the U.S. member of an international network of progressive activists (Association for Progressive Communications). This site includes Peacenet, Econet, Labornet, Womensnet and Conflictnet. A drop down menu allows one to search the "issues directory" for pre specified terms ranging from activism to youth, covering geographic areas, topics and movements. If this doesn't suit you, or you want more specific information, try the keyword search. The results from this option are ranked by percentages. A red @ icon indicates a search with high relevance, while a black @ icon represents searches with low relevance. The results page also has options to see similar documents or to view a summary of the document. (M .Rack) Internet Infidels' Secular Web Library --The Internet Infidels' Secular Web Library is a virtual library containing writings by freethinking authors such as Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Joseph McCabe, and Charles Watts. The complete works of Robert G. Ingersoll are included as well. Users can search by either author or title all the World Wide Web documents linked to this site. There are also five subject indexes to help refine searches: Historical Documents; Humor; Magazines (containing online editions of secular magazines); Modern Documents (published after 1970); and Songs. These indexes organize links to the full texts of relevant documents. (M. Gers)
Lenin Library --This site contains what is probably the largest collection of writings by Lenin on Internet. The search engine allows options for case sensitivity, number of hits per page as well as determining whether to search for all the words in a search string, any of the words, or the entire string as a phrase. The output includes the name of the file, the title of the printed work that it is from, and a short excerpt from a relevant paragraph with search terms highlighted in red. Unfortunately, the output only indicates the first instance a phrase appears in a file. To find subsequent occurrence, one must search that file separately using the find option under the edit menu. (M. Rack)
Marx/Engles Internet Archive --This is the search engine for the Marx/Engels Internet archive -- on on-line collection of works by Karl Marx, F. Engels, and other Marxist writers (including V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemberg, and Hal Draper). Options all one to determine case sensitivity, match the whole word, and to retrieve the full text of relevant documents. One can also choose the maximum number of files to be returned, the maximum number of allowed errors, and the maximum size (by number of lines) of the returned files. The results list provides the names of the files the search words appear, the page number in the print document, with links to the beginning of that document or the exact place in the document where the search words occur. I don't recommend using the full-text option, as it really does load the entire text of relevant documents -- a long slow process. Also, the display is really crappy with this option -- light print on a white screen (normally it returns red letters on a black screen). I've also noticed a tendency for the font size to change radically as one scrolls down the results page. (M. Rack)
U.S. Senate Homepage --The United States Senate Home Page has a "Search" option in its index that allows keyword searching of all the files on this site's server. An accompanying list of search tips instructs users about writing simple queries and using boolean and wildcard operators, as well as providing several examples of well-phrased queries. A query about the National Endowment for the Arts yielded transcripts of recent Senate debates, the full texts of the Appropriations Act and its amendments, an analysis of the Senate record of votes on the issue, and other related materials. The index also links to nonsearchable categories: Senators, Legislative Activities, Committees, Learning About the Senate, What's New, and Other Resources. Altogether, they comprise a comprehensive web-based information source on the U. S. Senate. (M. Gers)
AskERIC --AskEric is a personalized Internet-based service providing educational information to teachers, librarians, counselors, administrators, parents, and others throughout the United States and the world. It began in 1992 as a project of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology at Syracuse University. Users can customize their search to find hits in either the "information guide" or "lesson plans" sections of the AskERIC website, the ERIC Database, or a combination of the two. Advanced keyword searching is available (boolean, truncation, field searching, etc.), and users can designate the maximum number of hits (up to 100) returned. A highly respected site among K-12 educators. (L. Petrie)
Awesome Library --Developed by EDI (Evaluation and Development Institute), Awesome Library is an educational directory for teachers, students and parents. The Awesome Library "organizes" the World Wide Web into a collection of 12,000 carefully reviewed resources. Users can limit their search to find information indexed specifically for their "user" group, i.e. parents, kids, teenagers, librarians, etc., or can search the entire site. Keyword searchable with some site-specific advanced features, users can also link to other resources on the WWW. However, search tips explain how to restrict access to "child safe" sites through filters or software parental controls if a user should choose to do so. (L. Petrie)
North Dakota State University (NDSU) --This means more to me then others, but I am an alumni of North Dakota State and I needed to find out when the big game was this year. There search engine is really good. After entering a term, there is an option to match all terms, any terms, or recognize a Boolean operator. You can choose whether or not to receive the results in short or long form (with or without a summary) and it automatically searches for all diffent endings to a search term (i.e. the search term schedule looks for schedule, schedules, scheduling, scheduler, etc). (K. Thormodson)
PedagoNet -- Pedago Net- facilitate the exchange of educational resource material. (D. Kemp)
StudyWeb --"Focusing the web for information", this site aims to be an online source of quality information for grade school kids. There are 31 subject categories, which provide links to "educator-approved" sources. Easy-to-use for searchers of all levels, and search results are manageable. Each site listed has an abstract, and two ratings: visual and grade-level. I just wish there weren't banner ads for companies such as Disney splashed about the site. (K. Cutler)
University of Iowa, search page --This is a the search tool on the Universities home page. It allows you to search alphabetically for infromation you wish to find on the school's page. (K. Hanrahan)
University of Maryland, InforM Database --This is the search engine for the University of Maryland's InforM database. The database contains information about the university and its academic programs, as well as subject specific sites (such as the Women's studies and Diversity databases). One can search the Internet (this search engine is linked to Infoseek), all of the University of Maryland pages, of just the InfoM database. There are also options to search specific InforM directories (such as the Center on Aging, Diversity Digest, Women's studies, or the National Dairy Database). The page concludes with links to other UMD sites and Search Applications. (M. Rack)
American Library Association --The American Library Associations home page. At that home page click on "search web site." This leads you to the page where you can make specific inquiries about the many sites available at the American Library Association's pages. The site is quite extensive and if you do not know which division you need to seek to find a particular person, organization, address, etc., searching their web site through inquiry may be your best bet! (J. Allen)
The Digital Librarian; Children's Literature Section --The Digital Librarian's site for children's literature to search for children's literature titles. You may type in a title at this search location and retrieve information about a particular children's book or children's author. This site also provides extensive links to other sites dealing with children's literature. (J. Allen)
The Librarian's Index to the Internet --"The Librarians' Index to the Internet is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 3,700 Internet resources selected and evaluated for their usefulness to the public library user's information needs." LII is searchable by keyword, title, subject, description, or all of the above, and search tips explain boolean searching and the use of truncation. Users can also browse a frequently updated Subject List, and most entries here are linked to a results list. (L .Petrie)
ACSES --ACSES checks out prices, availability, shipping time and shipping costs of any book at over 25 on-line stores. (F. Frostestad)
Bibliofind --The home page of Bibliofind. At the home page click on "Search." From the search site you will be able to find out-of-print, used and rare books. It is a commercial site and, of course, will link you to those dealers or businesses wishing to sell their books. But, it may be useful to librarians as a reference resource in aiding patrons find that particular book that they just have to have. (J. Allen)
Gleebooks --The Amazon of Australia, Gleebooks is Sydney's premier independent bookseller. Gleebooks' selection of several hundred thousand titles ranges through Australian and international literature and the arts, to media, cultural and women's studies, to titles on the Internet, technology, computers and the history and philosophy of science. Visitors can order books online, and Gleebooks promises to promptly ship available titles locally or overseas. Basic search tips are offered. Users can perform keyword or exact searches of the entire database or of individual categories, and many entries include reviews. Not as comprehensive as Amazon; however, a good source for popular international titles that haven't yet been published in the U.S. (L. Petrie)
Internet Classics Archive --Sponsored by the MIT Program in Writing and Humanities Studies. Select texts by title or author, or search by keyword. Includes some commentary by site users. Full text available on many classic (i.e. Greek and Roman) texts, accessed both locally and remotely. (K. Hess)
Lilly Library Chapbook Collection --The Lilly Library Chapbook Collection has as its core 1,900 chapbooks from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and the United States, which were part of the Elisabeth W. Ball collection of children's books, received by the Library in 1983. (K. Magarrell)
19th Century Shop: Rare Books and Manuscripts of All Ages --"The 19th
Century Shop: Rare Books & Manuscripts of All Ages" is an online antiquarian
bookseller which carries books, manuscripts, and paper ephemera of all ages on the
topics of literature, Americana, history, economics, science, and philosophy. Their
"state of the art" search engine ("Search Our Database") allows customers to browse
their stock for a desired item by author, title, text, or publication date. A few helpful
searching hints are also included. (M. Gers)
Absolutely Arts --This site is basically an index to arts-related resources on the net. These resources consist of a registery of over 1,000 sites, sorted into 12 "databases." These databases range in nature from opera to museums to commercial galleries; and the user may choose to search all sites with a typed-in query, or just focus on one. The database(s) may also be searched without the entry of a typed-in word, as links may be found by clicking on hypertext categories, not unlike the major search engines. Banner-style adds do appear on the site (it ends in .com, after all), but at least the title-page ad provides a portal to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. (K. Cutler; S. Wahls)
The Image of France --This site offers a record of prints -- engravings, lithographs, woodcuts, etc. -- published in Paris between the fall of 1811 and the end of 1821. (K. Magarrell)
Argus --This page allows you to search your favorite musician out by name and provides information on their music, CD's, books, vinyl, magazines, other web pages or newsgroups. (K. Hanrahan)
Collector's Choice Music --Collectors' Choice Music is an electronic version of this company's mail-order catalog. Customers can query by artist, album, song title, record label, or catalog number, or even narrow the search somewhat by type of music (country, blues, classical, etc.). A few search tips are also included. Unfortunately, this search engine is only for the contents of this particular store, so if it doesn't have it, you're out of luck. (M. Gers)
Harmony --This site allows one to search music artists music off of tablature(guitar music) and also has it's own search engine,olga. (A. Overbay)
International Lyrics Server --This database of song lyrics is fairly comprehensive for popular, folk and jazz songs. It is searchable by artist, song title, and album title. The best feature is the full text search, which says "Type the words you remember from within the song." You can also choose to search the words as a phrase. Full text of each song is then available in HTML -- very printable! (K. Hess) Jazz Artist -- This search allows one to search for a specific jazz artist, or sort througha listsing arranged by instruments. This is extremely small scale. It lists 1642 artists, 654 links, and 311 concert tours. The engine also allows one to add, or modify the listings. (A. Cox)
MusicBoulevard --If you are looking to buy a CD, or want to know every album a music artist has out, or just want to find out info. about the artist, this is the place to go. (A. Overbay)
MusicSearch.com--I enjoyed this site because I like finding out different information about my favorite music groups. All you have to do is type in the name of the group you want to find and it spits out the best sites for that particular band. You can also sort out what files you are looking for. For example if you want to find sound files for a particular band you can indicate this and it will find only the sites with sound files on them. (C. Niles)
TicketMaster --This can get you the info about most concert tours coming up and also can provide for the tickets. (A.Overbay) Ultimate Band List -- This is a fairly large search that locates musical acts, provides links to pages related to them, and a place where albums from the artist(s) can be ordered through UBL. Also there is an alphabetical directory that lets one browse through the listings. The search works by artist, album, or something unfamiliar to me, resources. (A. Cox)
All Movie Guide --Excellent searchable site for all the movie info you could want -- look up film titles and get summaries, reviews and links to all actors/directors, etc. You can search for films with two people in common, by character, by author of original work, by technical criteria, by location, etc. You get the picture (no pun intended). Link to the All-Music Guide on same page. (K. Magarrell)
Entertainment Weekly Online --This site searches Enterainment Weekly Online. It uses AltaVista's search engine under a special license but it only searches the EW Online website or the website of any of the related magazines by the same publisher (i.e. Fortune, Time, People, Life, Money or ALL). There is an o0ption for a simple or an advanced search and the user may pick a time period of 1 week, 1 month, or all. (K. Thormodson)
Internet Movie Database -An internet movie database that specializes in films produced in Great Britian, the United States and Italy. The site can break down the search by title, cast/crew, character names and basic words. There are advanced search options and well as, daily news and box office charts. (J. Whelchel)
TVGen.Com --This site is for all you TV nuts out there. You type in your zip code and whatever show you are looking for and it will tell you what channel its on and what time as well. I typed in football and it gave me a list of games or shoes about football and you can click on the various listings and it will give you a small description of the program. (C. Niles)
The X-Files --Searches the entire official website of The X-Files TV show. There is a space for your search term and an option of AND/OR operators. There is also an option to be case sensitive or not for that particular search. Results are displayed in no particular order. When searching, all fields of every page seem to be searched. (K. Thormodson)
http://in-132.infospace.com/_1_106760383_categ/lotto -- This site is for avid gamblers. You can search by various states for the different lotteries that are going on. By clicking on Iowa it searches for all the current lotteries going on and then you can also find out the results of them at the same time. (C. Niles)
Pastry Wiz Food Search --This search engine lets the user search for food-related web sites and there are lots! I tried the term "cake" and the engine displayed 55 different sites. The sites displayed were mostly advertisements for particular businesses. The page also allowed the user to click and browse by category. (J. Kinikin)
Nasdaq --This is a great site for researching a nasdaq company. One can retrieve stock quotes, price graphs, news stories and analyst information on any Nasdaq company. It also contains data on the New York Stock Exchange and S & P 500. (S. Wahls)
JobSearch; USA Today --This is a very useful sight. By selecting an area of the country and a job category one receives a list of the job openings. From this list one can read the job description and even submit a resume instantly to the company. The company web site is also given along with the address and contact name of the individual hiring. This sight will certainly be useful in the near future. (S. Wahls)
Alaskana Index --Guide to Alaska statistics, data, facts (including True Bear Stories!) (K. Magarrell) Travel Scotland --Gives the information about everything you want to know about Scotland and it's roots. (A. Overbay)
The Detroit News --This is the Detroit News search web site. By keying in key phrases and words one can retrieve past and current articles on the chosen topic. (S. Wahls)
The Minnesota Twins --This site does a search on the Official Website of the Minnesota Twins. (Go Twins!!) They use Excite's search engine to conduct the searches of this entire website. It is a very simplistic search mechanism and results are shown in order of percentage of match with the search term. (K. Thormodson)
National Public Radio (NPR) Online --National Public Radio's official web site, NPR Online includes links to news stories, program listings, NPR organizational information, and member stations. (RealAudio allows users to listen to news stories while surfing the web or using other applications.) The site offers a keyword searchable index that permits boolean, proximity, truncation and field searching, and allows users to specify a max. number of matches (to 100). (L. Petrie) New York Times Searchpage -- This search looks for news articles posted either that day, or over the course of the last 365 days in the New York Times, concerning any terms entered in the engine. This search is specific to the newspaper. (A. Cox)
Global Fitness --This search engine finds health and fitness related sites. There are links to recipes, fitness tips, apparel, directories and memberships. There are also free fitness consultations as well as, nutrition analysis options. (J. Whelchel)
HealthFinder --This site is very comprehensive on the medical field. It is like asking a doctor on any medical topic. I researched liver cancer, hemochromatosis, as I soon found out. This is a very user friendly web site. It does not use a lot of medical jargon that may confuse that average American. (S. Wahls)
Nutrition --Provides links to internet resources related to nutrition. There is a fast food facts search that can find out just how many calories, how much cholesterol, sodium etc. you are consuming at fast food restaurants. There is a food and nutrition center from the USDA which includes menu planning, foodbourne illnesses, food composition data, nutrition programs and education, and dietary guidelines. (J. Whelchel)
The Virtual Hospital --This is a great place for medical information and since it is connected with the University of Iowa, it is also a reliable source of medical information. The first thing to notice is the amount of directions offered. Directions given include using quotes for phrases and all caps for Boolean operators. There are options for case sensitive or not and partial matching or not. This search engine is very sensitive and literal. Searches must be very exact, this engine would be most helpful to those with medical knowledge. (K. Thormodson)
Air and Space Magazine --This search engine is designed to search the articles in back issues of Air & Space magazine by keyword. I conducted a search using the term Wright Brothers and found 7 articles. The page also had fun air and space-related links. (J. Kinikin)
Geographical Names Information Center; United States Geological Survey - This page distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey allows the user to search for geographic features in the U.S. and its territories. The search can be done using a variety of known things about the feature in question including name, state or territory, county name, or feature type. It's a powerful tool to find obscure geographic information. (J. Kinikin)
NASA; Search Page -- Allows one to search all the NASA web sites from one place. The interface is simple and is quite flexible. There is a basic keyword search and an advanced search option. Options are set using a series of drop-down menus. You can choose to search for keywords in the beginning of a title, anywhere in a title, in the body of the document, or in "hot text" locations. There are choices for categories (news, press-releases, images, software, etc), format (http, pdf, MS Word or text), maximum size (in Kilobytes), time frame (from today to three years ago), and the institution where the document originates from / is stored (JPL, Johnson Space Center, etc). You can control the number of results per page as well as the information you want in the displayed results. The help screens are also excellent. (M. Rack)
National Geographic Society Searchpage --This page distributed by the National Geographic Society lets the user search for various things related to the Society. Four search engines are used. The first searches the National Geographic Web site. The second searches the NGS Publications Index. The third searches the Society's library. The fourth searches the Society's store. All of the engines worked well and gave the user additional links. (J. Kinikin)
Search the N-Numbers Database --This search engine allows the user to search for information using N numbers for aircraft. For anyone interested in flying and aviation, in general, this is a fun site. By just knowing the N number on any aircraft, this site lets you find out the owner, the aircraft model, the engine type, etc. (J. Kinikin)
Alan Turing --This Page is the gateway and guide to a large Website dedicated to Alan Turing (1912-1954): founder of computer science, mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, strange visionary and a gay man before his time. (J. Cai)
The Computer Museum -- "Learn about computer and have fun at the same time!". This is the homepage of the computer museum in Boston, which contains: 1.Play Interactive Exhibits 2. Computer History Resources and 3..Download Educational Materials. A nice site to learn about computer. (J. Cai)
The History of Computing --This site contains a selection of materials from the Division of Computers, Information & Society, National Museum of American History. Divided into six areas including Information Age Tour, the National Science Foundation's (NSF)Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) , the Innovation Network, Oral/Video History Area, Archives Area, and Computerworld Smithsonian Awards. The Oral/Video History Area provides the information about those big names in the computer world, which is interesting. (J. Cai)
Virtual Museum of Computing --This virtual museum includes an eclectic collection of World Wide Web (WWW) hyperlinks connected with the history of computing and on-linecomputer-based exhibits available both locally and around the world. (J. Cai)
Linkoping Science Fiction and Fantasy Database --The science fiction fan to Linkoping Science Fiction and Fantasy archived database. Here you may search for specific authors or titles as well as making other kinds of queries. This is another of many wel