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It is a well-worn cliché that getting information from the Internet is like getting a drink of water from a fire hose. There is a flood of information, but how do you find what you are looking for without drowning?
If you have a general idea of what you are looking for, then a good place to start is an on-line index or subject directory such as Yahoo or the Open Directory Project.
For example, suppose you are looking for information about a specific mathematical topic: wavelets, let us say. You could start with the subject index at Yahoo, click on "Science", click on "Mathematics", and there you will find an entry for "Wavelets". Or you could start at the WWW Virtual Library, click on "Science", then "Mathematics", then "Specialized Fields", and finally "Wavelets". Or you could start at the MathGate and search on "wavelets". Try it!
Suppose you would like to know about studying mathematics at the Universität Ulm. You could go to the list of Mathematics web sites at the Penn State Department of Mathematics, navigate to the list for Germany, and select Universität Ulm. Try it! (Note that overseas connections may be slow.)
Exercise
Starting from the Texas A&M University home page, locate the Texas A&M University Sailing Club.
If you find some useful lists or useful World-Wide Web pages, you can record them for future reference by using your browser's hotlist or bookmark feature.
If you do not know where to get started, then a search engine may be what you need. My current favorite is Google. You can find tips about searching the Internet at the Internet Public Library, the library at the University of California at Berkeley, and the spire project, for example.
Some new (year 2001) entries in the search engine competition are Vivisimo, Teoma, Wisenut, iLor, and SurfWax. These sites attempt to respond to a search request by returning a list that is sorted or categorized in a sensible way. At the date of this writing, it is unclear which (if any) of these sites will be successful in the long run.
So-called portals combine the features of search engines, subject directories, and other tools for navigating the World-Wide Web. Two of my favorites are Yahoo and AltaVista. Lists of popular search engines and portals are available at Search Engine Watch, at the Texas A&M University Library, and at the New York Times, for example.
Also, keep in mind that newsgroups can be good starting points for researching a topic. Some mathematics-related newsgroups are sci.math, sci.math.symbolic, and sci.math.research. There are also several newsgroups devoted to education.
The Math 696 course
pages were last modified April 5, 2005. | | | Electronic indexes of electronic information |