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The Internet is a worldwide system of computer networks. It is a public, cooperative, and self-sustaining facility accessible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The most widely used part of the Internet is the World Wide Web (often abbreviated "WWW" or called "the Web"). In most Web sites, certain words or phrases appear in text of a different color than the rest; often this text is also underlined. When you select one of these words or phrases, you will be transferred to the site or page that is relevant to this word or phrase. Sometimes there are buttons, images, or portions of images that are "clickable." If you move the pointer over a spot on a Web site and the pointer changes into a hand, this indicates that you can click and be transferred to another site.

Using the web, you have access to millions of pages of information. Web browsing is done with a web browser, the most popular of which are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Mozilla Firefox. The appearance of a particular web site may vary slightly depending on the browser you use. Also, later versions of a particular browser are able to render more "bells and whistles" such as animation, virtual reality, sound, and music files, than earlier versions.

The content of web sites comes from:

• Educational institutions (curricular information and library databases)
• Nonprofit organizations (information and advocacy)
• Government organizations (information for the public good)
• Individuals (interests, hobbies, advocacy)
• Private companies (underlying motive is to sell directly or by advertising)

Accessing Content on the Internet
A portal is a web page designed to be the starting point or anchor site for web users. Portals generally include web search engines and directories, community forums and chat rooms, and a range of the most popular web services which might include news, weather, sports, shopping, travel, entertainment, games, hobbies, recipes, personals, jobs, and financial information. Most portals will personalize web pages for individuals, often including free e-mail. Some of the most popular free portals include Excite, the GO Network, Lycos, MSN, Netscape, and Yahoo.

The web has made it possible for anybody on the Internet to publish. Web sites rarely go through the exacting review process demanded by editors of print resources. It is therefore even more important to critically evaluate information you find on the web in terms of purpose, authority, scope, accuracy, and presentation. See Evaluating Websites for more information.

Searching the Internet
There are five basic approaches to finding information on the Internet. The approach you take depends on the method that best serves your needs.

Go directly to a URL
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) identifies an address on the Web. It consists of a protocol defining the way your browser needs to communicate and a domain, and often includes directories and file names. Connecting directly to a URL is most useful when you suspect an organization may provide the information you need and you already know the URL or can make an educated guess. 

In the URL internet.php

• http is the hypertext transfer (web) protocol, others include gopher, ftp, telnet, and mailto
• elibrary.unm.edu   is the University of New Mexico University Libraries domain or address
• services is a folder in the University Libraries domain
• internet.php is a file (instead of php, these will most often have the .html or .htm extension, which stands for hypertext markup language)

In the US , the top level domain extension: 

• .edu is used by educational institutions
• .org is used by nonprofit organizations
• .com is used by companies
• .gov is used by US government agencies
• .mil is used by the US military
• .net is used by networks

New domain extensions include:

• .biz for business organizations
• .info for all uses
• .int for international organizations
• .name for individuals

The rest of the world uses two-letter country codes.

Browse a subject directory
A subject directory is a hierarchical, topical arrangement of web resources gathered by people. It is most useful for browsing. Examples include INFOMINE, Internet Scout Project, Google Directory,  Librarians' Index to the Internet, LookSmart, Open Directory, RDN, the WWW Virtual Library, and Yahoo. Thousands of specialized subject directories are available on the web as well – use the general subject directories listed above or the search engines listed below to find them.

Use a search engine or meta search engine

Search engines
A search engine is a word-by-word index of web resources gathered by a computer program. It is useful for all kinds of searching. Some of the most established and successful include Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves), Google, Live Search (MSN), and Yahoo!. (Google supplies AOL, Go, iWon, and Netscape. Yahoo! supplies alltheweb and AltaVista. They, along with Ask, supply Excite and HotBot.) Other search engines include entireweb, Exalead, Gigablast, Thunderstone, and Wisenut. (Wisenut supplies LookSmart).

Meta search engines
A meta search engine searches several other search engines at one time. Meta search engines include Dogpile, info.com, Ixquick, iZito.com, Mamma, MetaCrawler, Search.com, SurfWax, Turbo10, TurboScout, and Vivísimo.

Specialized search engines

Academic search engines
Google Scholar and Live Search Academic (MSN) find scholarly materials on the Internet.

Images & Sounds
Most major search engines seek images and sounds. In addition to the search engines listed above, multimedia search engines include AltaVista Image Search, Ditto, FindSounds.com, FOTOFINDER.NET, LYCOS Images and Audio, picsearch, SearchVideo (AOL), and SingingFish.

News
Most major search engines now offer news search engines: Alltheweb News, Altavista News, Excite News ( click on the news button), Google News, Live Search News (MSN), Lycos News, and Yahoo! News. Some search engines specialize in news: Ananova, 1stHeadlines, Rocket News, and NewsTrove.

Reference
Bartleby and InfoPlease offer free reference sources.

Search a database
A database is a file of information whose records may be searched by defined fields. A phone directory is an example of a database. They are useful for targeted searching. A regular search engine will not search the contents of a database. CompletePlanet lets you search for a wide variety of databases.   

Search Usenet or Join a Discussion Group 

Usenet is a collection of conversations that take place electronically on almost any topic you can imagine. In addition to joining a Usenet discussion (or e-mail discussion group), it is possible to search the archives of past Usenet exchanges. It is most useful for tapping expert knowledge or gauging public opinion. Search Google Groups for the archives of Usenet discussions. To find an e-mail discussion group, search Topica.

Search Techniques
Most Web search tools offer a simple search interface – the results are determined by a search algorithm. Only advanced search techniques now determine the relevance of your results. All search techniques are based on Boolean logic. In most search engines you will either conduct a Boolean search or use a required operator. Other techniques will help you refine your search. Please note that different search tools will use different symbols for truncation, phrase, and proximity searching if they offer them at all. 

Boolean Logic
Boolean logic is a mathematical way of combining sets. Boolean operators include and or +, or, and not or - . 

In the results from a two word search: 

• and means both words must appear
• or means that either word may appear
• not means that the second word must not appear 

In a variation developed for the web, placing a + or - at the beginning of a word means: 

• +   the word is required to appear
• -   the word must not appear (same effect as not)

Find out which Boolean operator is used as the default before entering your search. 

Truncation or wild card

• Truncation makes it possible to search a root word (ex. feminis*).
• A wild card replaces a single letter (ex. wom?n).

Phrase Searching
Search a sequence of words (ex. "capital punishment"). 

Proximity Searching
Search for words that are close together (ex . john near kennedy) 

Field Searching
Field searching limits a search to words within the same defined portion of a record (ex. image:mermaid).

Search Tips
The following hints and caveats are based on the fact that search engines index different parts of the Internet, search it in different ways, and rank results differently. 

If at first you don't find what you need: 

• Look beyond the first screen of results. 
• Try the advanced search features offered by most search tools.
• Try more than one search engine. 
• Use the help screens provided by the search engine producers. 

Coverage
Search engines look at different parts of the web: 

• Not every site is indexed - excluded are passworded sites, sites that choose not to be indexed, sites without links, and the contents of databases. 
• Not every word is indexed - each database has common stop words that it does not index and some engines only search a certain number of words on a page. 
• Not every page on a site is indexed - some engines limit their searches to the top two or three levels or exclude personal sites piggybacked onto another site. 

Ranking
Algorithms are formulas that take the results of your search and rank them. Each search engine keeps them secret, but they all tend to give more weight to: 

• Meta information provided by the host.
• Words in specific fields, especially titles and headers.
• Words near top of record.
• Words which appear more often.
• Records that contain all of the words you entered. Some engines take into account popularity through number of links or number of times users click through.

Beware of search engines that accept payment to move sites to the top of the search results list.

Currency 
Recent information may not be available - it takes time to create an index of the web and indexing cycles range from days to weeks.