The Advanced Internet Searcher's Handbook (3rd ed.)

This is the third edition of a very useful guide on internet searching. Written in a clear and readable style, the book contains information on how the internet works and how to use it more efficiently to find the information you need. Readers can either read the book from cover to cover or read only chapters and sections that they are interested in.

The book is divided into three parts, with Chapter 1 providing an overview of the internet. Part one contains eight chapters under the heading “Mining the internet for information”. Attesting to Google's popularity, the author has devoted 12 pages discussing the various features of Google under the chapter on free‐text search engines. The Google Directory is also discussed under the chapter on index‐based search engines. The other chapters are devoted to discussions on multi‐ or meta‐search engines, resource‐ or site‐specific search engines, how to search the “hidden web”, information about images, sounds and multimedia, and finding people on the internet.

In this edition, the author has devoted many pages to describing and explaining Google, but there is a short paragraph on Vivisimo and its “clustering engine” on page 71. Vivisimo's Clusty.com has recently been touted as a worthy challenger to Google. Given the rapid changes in the internet it was not possible to include an explanation of Clusty.com in this edition. Perhaps a discussion about Clusty.com could be included in the next edition of this book.

Part two, on “Becoming an expert searcher”, contains four chapters. A whole chapter is devoted to the discussion on weblogs. The author provides examples of weblogs that are useful to information professionals, information about news aggregators and RSS (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), and how to locate and create weblogs. The other three chapters discuss other database resources, virtual libraries and gateways, Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists. The information about RSS is very useful for anyone who has to view a large number of weblogs or news sites. The author reveals how RSS is a very fast and effective way of keeping up to date on a particular topic or finding out what experts and major players in an industry are saying about new developments in that industry.

Part three contains four chapters about the future of the internet, tips for better and quicker searching, and information about multimedia applications, web‐page browsers, anti‐virus software, spyware and firewalls. The reader may be overwhelmed by the amount of information about internet searching by now, and may not know where to start when he or she receives an enquiry. The author reminds the reader to use common sense or think laterally to search for information from the internet. By providing sample searches on queries such as finding information about Christmas traditions, cheap air tickets and MI5, the author shows how easy it is to find the information required from the internet without having to use search engines, intelligent agents, newsgroups or a virtual library. The down‐to‐earth advice that runs throughout the guide is very useful and reassuring to the over‐anxious searcher.

The author makes several predictions about the future developments of the internet in Chapter 14. Among the predictions are the rise of intelligent agents, the role of weblogs, the impact of broadband technology and mobile computing, the impact of the internet on academic publishing and the increase of online journals, especially for specialised topics.

Although the author has included many helpful advice and hints throughout the guide, he has included an extra 50 tips and hints for better and faster internet searching in Chapter 15. The tips are divided into seven sub‐sections, including finding web pages, saving and printing pages, using bookmarks and faster loading of pages. The sub‐section on “Getting the most out of your browser” contains 16 tips.

The author ends the guide with a chapter on “Sources for further help, information and assistance” containing annotated lists with URLs of a select list of library and information professional sites, magazines and journals, bookshops, mailing lists, spam and sites providing news and information about the latest internet developments. Two appendices on “HTML for a search engine home page” and country codes, and an index are included at the end of this guide.

The only complaint I have about this guide is the lack of examples and URLs from Asia, Australia, New Zealand or continental Europe. Searchers have sometimes said that it is difficult to find information about countries in Asia, especially from countries that are not so technologically advanced or countries that do not publish much information in English. It would be useful if such information could be included in the next edition of this guide.

I found this guide very useful, easy to read and understand due to the author's conversational style of writing. The layout of the book, with the information clearly divided into sub‐sections, screenshots of web pages and boxes containing hints and tips and bite‐size trivia about the internet, makes it very easy to get the information you want. Each chapter begins with an introduction and ends with a summary and a list of URLs mentioned in each chapter, making it easy for the reader to test the given URLs. This is an excellent guide for new and advanced internet searchers.