Find It Online: The Complete Guide to Online Research

by Alan M. Schlein

Are you using the Internet to the best of your ability? 'Find It Online' provides the tools and techniques you need to master online research. Learn how to use numerous search tools, manage and filter... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1889150452
• ISBN13: 9781889150451
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Facts on Demand Press
• Length: 564 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

An excellent guide for research librarians

It used to be that a good reference librarian had only to keep up with the new books being published, and perhaps keep one eye on the newspapers and learned journals. Nowadays, one has to keep track of where best to find the answers to questions on the Web, as well. And it ain't easy! Massive printed volumes of Web addresses weren't much help even a decade ago because they were indiscriminate and seldom included annotations. What we needed -- and still need -- are a few collections of a (relatively) few carefully selected germane Web sites with the reasons given for their inclusion. And this discriminating and well thought out guide is the best one I've seen yet. It's intended mostly for the professional information broker or commercial researcher-for-hire, but librarians in any large public or academic library system do much the same sort of thing and will profit enormously by reading it. After an excellent introduction to the principles of online research, it's divided into topical sections: government resources, public records, news sites, business tools, and international (i.e., non-U.S.) research. Then there are several sections on managing and filtering what you find, how to evaluate its credibility and utility, and privacy concerns. Schlein spends considerable time on fee-based and "hidden" resources, too, not just the freebies on the public Web. Some of the sites he recommends I was already aware of, but there are many others I hadn't run across before. And I have been recommending his advice on search strategies and information massaging to my colleagues. There are a couple of annoying things about this otherwise superior book, however. One is the need for much, much tighter copyediting -- like saying "the software can be moderated" when they meant "modified," and the sometimes eccentric punctuation, and the tendency to break Web addresses in peculiar places (letting only the last character of ".html" fall to the next line gives you a quite different address). The other annoyance is a tendency by the author to laud (frequently) any book published by his editors, associates, or advisors -- so much so that it becomes embarrassing. But given the high quality of the book's actual content, I suppose I can live with that.

I love this book

I'm somewhere in the middle of average search-freak and power-user. When I scanned the first edition, I was amazed at the number of useful tips it offered. As I got more proficient at searching, I would refer back to the book, and start to pick up the little nuances it offered.The Third Edition is just that more valuable and detailed than the First. I've given almost a dozen of them as gifts, all with the initial reaction of, "How nice -- a book..." Each and every recipient made a special point to thank me by the end of their first week browsing through it. You'll thank someone too, even if it's yourself for finding this great resource.

The Perfect Online Research Guide for Beginners

This book deserves more than 5 stars for making the Internet fully accessible to anyone for a minimum of cost in time and money.If you have enough skill to turn on your computer and get onto the Internet, this book will take you where you want to go in the fastest, least frustrating way. Within hours, you will be more efficient and effective than people who have done online research for years, but have not yet read this book.Although Web addresses and sites will change, the best basic methods of how to do research online will shift much less often. You should be able to apply what you learn from this book for some time to come.Some of the many helpful things you will learn include:(1) which search engines work best for which kinds of questions(2) how to get the fewest possible sites from a search with the greatest likelihood that they will be helpful to you(3) which sources of information to go to directly without a search first(4) how to assess the credibility of a source(5) how to get things for free that most people pay for(6) when to spend money to save time(7) how to manage your e-mail to spend less time on it.You will also benefit from three sample search models in chapter 12, one for finding a person, another for doing a business profile, and a third for problem solving. Most of your searches will involve one of these three search types. An area you may not think about now is what people can learn about you while you do your research. The sections on privacy issues and how you can protect yourself are outstanding.About a third of the book is devoted to indexes to make it easier for you to find government public records and the right Web site for your research needs.Even though I have been doing online research for many years, I plan to keep this book next to my computer from now on. If you read many of my reviews, you will notice that that is something I rarely say about a book. After you have finished learning how to do better and faster online research with this wonderful resource, I suggest that you step back and think about new questions that you should be asking now that you have improved access to good and timely information. For example, should you be doing more to check out investments? Or should you be learning more about becoming a better parent? Or spouse? Asking and answering those questions will probably be the biggest payoff you can get from this very helpful guide.Be rich in knowledge and turn it into wisdom!

Eureka! I can do it

When Mr. Schlein spoke at a recent seminar, he asked Internet novices to raise their hands. As one severely computer-challenged I did't put mine up, as I had yet achieve that level. However, as a journalist, I picked up the second edition "Find It Online," came home, and started trying to search sites as he described. Wonder of wonders, it worked. The book is written with clarity, in an understandable way and contains a wealth of information for the neophyte as well as for the expert. It is an invaluable tool and a great ego-booster as well.

The Real COMPLETE Guide to Online Research

Since the first minute I opened this book, I knew this was the book I was looking for - a serious book for online research. FIND IT ONLINE not only gives you hundreds of specialized online sources in a well-organized manner, but it also explains how the web is organized, how to define your search, which tool to use, and how to manage and evaluate the data you find. The book is arranged so you can use it as a reference or read it through. I found FIND IT ONLINE extremely well-written and full of expert knowledge. Thank you, Mr. Schlein!