Finding specific information on the Internet has been compared to walking into a huge library after an earthquake has knocked all the books off the shelves!
Fortunately, there are a number of searching services on the Web that constantly seek out and organize this information.
These searching services develop searchable databases that you can query.
This course will introduce you to some of the most popular information retrieval services.
It will also teach you the techniques that will allow you to search for and find information at any desired level .

Along the way, you will visit these services, compare their ease of use and the quantity and quality of their results, and perform increasingly complex searches using simple and advanced search queries.

After completing the course, you will be able to:

1. Describe and list a variety of sites on the Internet's World Wide Web that you can use to find references to information on specific topics
2. Evaluate which of these resources best meets your need for finding the information you typically look for
3. Compose simple and advanced search queries from a combination of keywords and symbols that can expand or narrow a search
4. Locate additional resources, current news, and tutorials about searching to stay current
5. Find information of personal and professional interest using a combination of search sites and resources, including directories, single search engines and metasearch engines, specialized search sites, Internet Newsgroups, and links from "key sites"

In this course, you will see illustrations of techniques and procedures with two kinds of presentations:

1. the SlideShow and
2. the MouseOver.