PATHWAYS — Volume10, Number 2 – May, 1998

In fewer than ten years the Internet has moved from a document exchange medium used by a few world-wide governmental and academic research organizations, to a nearly universal medium for information exchange. It now affords businesses a powerful tool in their search for useful information. On the Net one can find such information as …

• competitive offerings

• information about technological change

• availability of products and services

… and much, much more.

Business users report many positives for the Net as an information source. It:

• provides worldwide access to information.

• offers convenience by providing desktop access to information, instead of trips to a business library.

• affords users a simple, standard interface. (Even though browser interfaces vary, they are more similar than different.)

As an information-gathering tool, the Internet is not without its limitations, of course. It is neither designed nor optimized for research. There are no cataloging conventions for information. Anyone can put anything anywhere. There are no standards of accuracy or quality (peer group review, professional association endorsement, etc.). There are almost too many search engine options, yet each lacks adequate, selective search power. In short, everything is accessible … provided you can find it.

In our eagerness to run down information on the Net, we too often jump right in without an organized plan of attack and without learning how to properly use the existing search engine tools. Those who fail to develop habits for using the Internet efficiently can waste hours of search effort with minimal return for their effort.

At Issue proposes an organized approach and suggests some ways to get the most from your Internet information search.

Nothing will contribute more to your successful, efficient Internet information search than defining as precisely as you can just what it is you will be searching for. A simple example should make the point. Compare these two search objective statements:

Compared to Statement A, Statement B provides a level of precision that will help you more quickly narrow your search efforts. In practice, you might have an even longer, more complete list of search objectives. And, in the course of your information search, you may find it necessary to further refine your objectives. In our example, for instance, while searching for a document management system you may find that all the features you want simply aren't available within your budget. Or you may discover that there are features of which you were previously unaware that could significantly improve your firm's user accessibility to stored information. In either case, you will want to go back and refine your search objective(s).

There are two tasks to accomplish at this step:

1. Select the one or two search engines most likely to find the information you seek quickly. Use others only as a last resort. The following table lists some popular browsers and their key search features.
   
   
2. Develop a list of key words and phrases, suitable for the search engine(s) you have selected, that will help you get the information you want.

In selecting a search engine you are, of course, limited by what is available on your browser. But you will find that some search engines are more attuned to one type of information than another.

Virtually all popular browsers today allow you to search using key words and phrases which you can alter pretty much "on the fly" to narrow the search. You can reduce on-line time, however, and get faster results if you develop an initial keyword/phrase list before logging onto the browser. Using our document management system search example, you might develop a list such as the following.

In column one , you might list hardware and software vender firms you are currently familiar with.

Some vendors provide a search facility within their website. When this is the case, the list of focusing phrases in column three may get faster results than trying to use the website's menu options to get to such information.

With your tentative set of objectives and key word/phrase lists in hand, you are ready to begin the information search. Here are some techniques to make your search more productive:

• Learn how to use the topic-narrowing capabilities of the search engine. Many search engines allow you to apply simple Boolean logic to narrow your search. The trick is, you must learn the conventions of each particular search engine. Some, like AltaVista, use words with capital letters such as AND, AND/OR, and NOT to accomplish Boolean functions. Others use math symbols such as + and -. Still others, like basic level Lycos, offer clear text options that accomplish the same thing without need to learn Boolean logic conventions.

• Use search engine abstracts. Some search engines provide the option of displaying a brief abstract. If an abstract option is available, use it. Otherwise, probably only a website's title and the first few lines of text will appear in the listing, and could be anything from a copyright notice to a major heading, to hidden key words, to the first sentence or two of the website page. Such information often is not too useful.

• When you find a likely site, spend time exploring its main menu (often included in the home page). Many sites fail to prepare their home pages and menus with user needs in mind. You often have to figure out the "logic" of menu choices before you can focus in on the information you need. In our document management system example, there may be no menu option called "Prices." Instead, you may find prices buried in a section called "Options," or one called "Specifications."

• Use overviews and "white papers." Often your information search will be more complex than our document management system example. If you are trying to come up to speed on a new topic, take the time to read any topic overviews provided.

• Use hypertext links, but with care. Site overviews often contain hypertext links to other topics within the site or even to other websites. If you are searching for general background information about a topic, links to references outside of the site may be productive. But if, as in our example, you are trying to get specific product features and cost information, hyperlinks to external sites are less likely to be of value.

In searching for business-related information, the Internet can be a powerful tool. Regrettably, it is not a fully user-centric tool; information searches are often time-consuming. A number of organizations are beginning to offer net-based research services on a "for-fee" basis. If you need to accomplish a net-search but you don't have the time or internal support to get the job done, you may want to consider such a service.