Lesson 4:  Library Gateways and Specialized Databases

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What exactly is a gateway?  Well, there are two kinds--library gateways and portals.  If you haven't read the section on subdirectories, I would suggest reading it now, as it explains portals.  A library gateway is a collection of databases that have been put together by professionals (usually librarians).  They are arranged by subject and are very useful for research because they have been checked, verified, and are supported by research. 

OK, now you might be asking yourself, "what is a subject-specific database?"  Well, it's exactly what the title suggests.  It is a database that is dedicated to one specific subject area.  These types of databases are put together and experts, such as professors and researchers (to name only a couple)  who have a vast amount of credible knowledge about their particular subject. 

One cool thing that I learned about the internet is that there's a portion of it that's called the "invisible" or "deep" web.  A lot of library gateways and specialized databases are part of this.  (I actually thought the terms sounded kind of James Bondish, but that's just me)  If something is part of the invisible, or deep web, what that means is it can't be searched by the spiders or robots that are used by most free search engines.  The documents contained in this "deep web" make up about 80% of the content that's actually on the web today.  Some library gateways and specialized databases, while being part of this invisible web, are accessed by the use of passwords and permissions. 

For my assignment after reading this tutorial, I was supposed to try and find an article on netiquette that was written several years ago by the author of the tutorial.  First I was to go to Google or Ask and try to find the article by typing in just the key word "netiquitte."  When I did this in Google, I ended up with over 14 million sites.  At Ask, I got a return of over 900 thousand.  Clearly, I needed to narrow my search terms.  When I did narrow them, as the author of the tutorial suggested, to "netiquette bck2skol chamberlain" the end result from both search engines had the site with the article as the first one listed.  What I learned from this lesson is that when searching online, without specific search terms, you will end up with far too many results to weed through. 

Lesson 1 Search Engines   Lesson 2 Metasearch Engines   Lesson 3  Subdirectories   Lesson 4  Library Gateways  

Lesson 5  Evaluating WebPages   Lesson 6  Creating a Search Strategy   Lesson 7  Basic Search Tips  

Lesson 8  Boolean Logic   Lesson 9  Field Searching   Lesson 10  Troubleshooting Lesson 11  Clusty Search Engine 

     Chapter 12  All Things Google   Lesson 13  All Things Yahoo