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Course Overview
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Session 1
What is the Internet?

Internet vs other information resources
Finding a 'knowledge hub'

Search engines
- How they work
 - Comparing engines
- Using Top Three sites

Search strategies
Offline Assignment 1

Session 2
Evaluating information
Researching companies
Researching markets
Researching countries
Researching news
Search software
Offline Assignment 2

The Internet vs other online Information Resources

What is the difference between an online database and the 'Internet'?  And what can you find on the Internet that you can't find on, say, Dialog (a well-known information service providing pay-for access to hundreds of databases)?

A database The Web
  • Organised
  • Fully indexed
  • Sophisticated search capabilities
  • Aimed at professional end-users
  • Disorganised
  • Partially indexed
  • Limited search capabilities
  • Aimed at everyone: professionals and casual end-users alike

The main differences in the types of information

A database The Web
  • Secondary information
  • Often abstracted
  • Well classified according to subject
  • Unless it is 'news' it appears after it has already appeared in the 'public domain'
  • Primary information
  • Probably not abstracted
  • Probably not well classified
  • Likely to be the first appearance of this information anywhere e.g. the Starr Report

Examples of information you would look for on a database and on the Web.

A database The Web
  • Market Research
  • Company information
  • News

All of this information, you pay for; either in connect charges or (also?) in document charges.
  • Market Research (and surveys in progress)
  • Company information (on their own web site)
  • News (much of the same stuff, for free)
  • What consumers think and care about
  • MORE

Sometimes the differences get blurred (e.g when you access an online database via the Web).  During this tutorial we will refer to information on pay-for-databases as 'Premium' information.

The Internet Search-Off: A comparison of the Internet and DIALOG/Dow Jones Interactive

Sue Feldman of Datasearch, with the help of several experienced searchers, compared the two services in a paper published in The Searcher.  Searching for information on behalf of real clients (and therefore, looking mostly for business-related information), the professional searchers were invited to compare the job done by Web search engines vs the online services DIALOG or Dow Jones Interactive.

Some of the conclusions:

  • More irrelevant articles on the Web
  • Longer to search and format information from the Web
  • Boolean not the best query language for the Web
  • Overall, a similar number of highly relevant documents returned from each approach

Examples of what you can and can't get for free on the Internet.

Free Cost
  • Executive Summaries of Market Research
  • Public company annual reports
  • Abstracts of research papers
  • Public domain information, government documents, self-published research information, some patents, etc.
  • Potentially, any information whose author is likely to have an interest in making it available on the Web
  • Portions of or complete Market Research
  • Private company annual reports
  • Complete text of research papers
  • Specialist newswires
  • Specialised databases: patents, chemical structures, etc

And there's one other KEY difference between the Internet and an online database: when significant changes are made to the way a Web resource works you will probably NOT be notified in advance.  In reality, Web search engines and such other information resources change very regularly - their content and coverage changes, as does the user interface, as do the search facilities and documentation.

Exercise Number 2: Head-to-Head on Snowboards

Suggested time for exercise = 10min SHOW HINTS
The magazine Online features a regular column to compare the Internet versus traditional online services.  

Compare the two for yourself in the following exercise:
For the purpose of the exercise, we will be comparing Google (www.google.com) and Profound (www.profound.co.uk), which is a pay-for service, so you'll have to look at the results of 'one we made earlier' here: Results from Profound

You are the marketing manager for a snowboard manufacturer.  You need to know two things:
1.  The worldwide market for snowboards
2.  What is currently considered to be the coolest snowboard design or designer?
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