Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Internet Searching
Internet Searching
Terry Wasserman
Internet Assignment
26 April 2009
ILS 504/Spr 09
Prof. Okobi
2 Wasserman, T. Internet Assign. 26 Apr. 09 ILS504 Spr09 Okobi
After reviewing the resources listed, answer the following questions with Internet
sources. Identify the ready reference site used to answer each question. Give the answer
to the question. Why is the Internet better for answering the question?
I began this search by trying the Internet Public Library, where I found a
site I had used before and am confident in, www.biography.com. However, the
article I found was fairly long-winded and not easy to search through, and the
explanation of how Twain got his pen name was unsatisfactory, so I tried another site
I am familiar with, www.about.com. This site is owned by the New York Times and
generally gives fairly succinct answers. I entered ‘Mark Twain pen name’ and found
the perfect concise explanation, “Mark Twain - Why Did Samuel Clemens Use the
Pen Name of Mark Twain?” with a link to the author, E. Lombardi, and a brief
resume including references. Twain explained his nom de plume himself in Life on the
Mississippi as that of an older man who used to write to a newspaper using that
name, and when he “discarded it,” Twain adopted it. He also says that the name
This question was better answered on the Internet because more sources
for words that rhyme, and in this case it simply said that there weren’t any such
words. I didn’t feel that was complete enough, so I tried another site I’m familiar
with, www.askoxford.com, and in the search a keyword box I wrote, “rhymes with
orange.” I found the perfect entry under Frequently Asked Questions discussing the
fact that the two words that have no rhymes in the English language are orange and
silver; however, they both have half-rhymes, lozenge for orange and salver for silver.
This question was better answered online simply due to the speed with
which I was able to answer it—if I’d needed to locate print sources on such an
search for “hand with eye,” seeking a similar item for which a name was given. Once
Scholar search, where I found a lot of scientific articles that were written by someone
named Hamsa. Then I tried a Google Book search, where I found The JPS guide to
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and found an article describing a hamsa, derived from the Hebrew word for five
(hamesh), as “a hand-shaped amulet worn to ward off the evil eye.” Following that
article, on the same page, there is another describing the evil eye as “the source of
sickness.”
This question was better answered online because I was able to do an image
search to discover the identity of the object, whereas I might not have had any idea
In order to find a good conversion site, I began with the Internet Public
Library’s reference site. I found www.megaconverter.com, and from there it took just a
second. I used the “List Selector,” chose a surface-area search, typed in 3, chose
This question was better answered online because the source did the
Search Questions
Search Questions require more than one online search to find the answer, just like in
print sources.
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You will need to figure out the subject of the question, look at the related subject
directories and search for the appropriate subject directory and conduct the search in
the relevant directories. Try answering the following questions. Provide the answer
to the question and document the steps you took to find the answer and the sites you
I began attempting to answer this question by checking the New York Times
database of archived articles for world events in 1852. I found a number of potentially
useful articles, each of which was tens of thousands of words long in a nearly
where I checked the timelines the site offered. I found some important information: that
the South African Republic had been established, Louis Napoleon had proclaimed
himself Napoleon III (emperor) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been
released, but I was fairly certain that more than that had occurred. I next tried reading
Millard Fillmore’s State of the Union address on infoplease.com, where I learned that
found via my search of world events in 1852 on google.com until I ran across
www.answer.com. This website compiles and edits information from other websites,
has thousands of words about each year, including 1852. Here I found out that in 1852,
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in addition to South Africa’s independence, H.B. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Louis
Napolean; the Persian prime minister was murdered, China’s Taiping Rebellion
continued, Burma deposed King Pagan Min after a six-year reign, British forces took
Rangoon as a second Burmese War began, New Zealand gained home rule, Brazil
imported its last legal African slaves and the HMS Birkenhead sank off the coast of Africa.
elected the 14th President of the United States, and U.S. Senator Henry Clay, Braille
inventor Louis Braille and Secretary of State Daniel Webster all died. The site included
many more events, but I deemed these most worthy of inclusion here.
Upon first reflection, the murder of the author of the U.S. National Anthem’s son does
not immediately bring to mind anything very significant. My first step was to find the
son’s name, which I did by typing Francis Scott Key into answer.com. I found that the
son’s name was Philip Barton Key, but there was no entry on answer.com for him. So I
tried the New York Times index, where I found a book review of a novel about his
murder and an explanation of the murder and subsequent trial (Key was murdered by
Dan Sickles, the man he was cuckolding). Here I read that it was the first successful use
of the insanity plea. I also looked up the event itself in the New York Times index, via
the murderer’s name, Sickles, and found the article published the day after the verdict,
27 April 1859. The writer explained that after speaking with a juror, he now understood
that the jury saw its verdict as a victory over adultery; in other words, it did not intend
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the precedent that the case set. So, I then used google.com to search for first successful
insanity plea, where I found a court brief that discussed this precedent as the first
successful acquittal on the ground of temporary insanity (a court brief seemed a more
interested in why DVDs are better than videotapes, not the particular functions that
particularly and not the broader question of why DVDs are better than VHS.
use. I, then tried, which is better DVD or VHS in a google search and found one very
useful article from a reliable source, a technology magazine, Bityard, and a number of
articles from less reliable sources (blogs, wikis, etc.). The Bityard article discusses the
three basic things that DVDs can do that videotapes cannot: DVDs can store much more
material in a much smaller space, DVDs can contain extra/special features like language
choice or subtitling and DVD chapters can be easily and quickly accessed through an
interactive menu.
Next I tried VHS vs. DVD on both consumerreports.com and Technology Review
and came up with no useful articles on either (I tried variations of the above as well).
Then I decided to search Nexis in hopes of a technology article—I searched VHS and
DVD capabilities on Nexis, first choosing newspapers between 1999-2002 and then
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magazines of the same year. I found the more useful articles under magazines (most of
the articles under newspapers were comparing various DVD players and briefly
Primedia Publications, “Format of the Future,” (E. Eberle, 1/99), that discusses the DVD’s
advantages, including its versatility and portability—DVDs can be used on the same
laptop most business professionals carry with them all the time anyway, whereas
videotapes need a specific videotape player. DVDs can also be produced and edited on
desktops, unlike videotapes, which require much more equipment to be edited and fully