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How to Research the Subject of
Your Next Report, Book, or Article
by Greg Spence
Introduction:
If you have been online for any length of time you cannot fail to have noticed the wealth
of data that is available to you on the Internet.
Websites, research companies, specialist search engines, newsgroups, mailing lists,
ezines, magazines, newspapers are just some of the resources you can use to help you come
up with the next subject for your book, article or ezine.
To newbies, the Internet is both a goldmine and a bottomless pit of data that somehow
needs to be turned into information. It is very easy for someone new to the Internet to
become overwhelmed very rapidly and find themselves getting lost.
For an author the Internet makes research easier, faster, and more efficient...as long as
you know how to get to the information you need.
This article gives you some pointers as to how you can find and research your next topic
without having to spend days online.
Where do I start?
Before you can answer this question you need to know what type of resources are available
to help you in your quest.
We shall take a look at search engines and briefly mention other resources you can use.
Search Engines:
This is where most people begin their journey. There are hundreds of search engines one
can use but my advice to you would be to stick with the majors which are:
Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com
AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com
InfoSeek
http://www.infoseek.com
Excite
http://www.excite.com
Lycos
http://www.lycos.com
HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com>
WebCrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com
Northern Light
http://www.northernlight.com
There are several disadvantages when using these engines that you need to be aware of.
1. You need to visit each engine to make sure you find all of the resources that cover
your chosen subject area. Not all websites are registered with all search engines. This
can take up a lot of time and depending on how narrow or broad your search may be, you
could find yourself wading through millions of listings!
2. Not all of the websites returned will be relevant. When website owners submit their
sites to the search engines they may use keywords that only partially reflect their site
content. You must manually filter out those that are not relevant and you may only be able
to do this by visiting each site!
3. You will waste a great deal of time.
How to make your searching more effective:
To make your surfing experience more productive I suggest you start with this site:
http://www.askjeeves.com.
This is a search engine which allows you to ask a question in English and it will
immediately tell you all the possible resources that can answer that question for
you...including other search engines! In fact AltaVista use the AskJeeves engine to
perform some of their own searches.
The other thing you can do, when using the engines listed above, is to choose your
keywords very carefully. Never use single word searches because you will end up with
millions of websites. Instead use at least two or more keywords together to narrow down
your search.
For example, if you are writing a book about online golfing sites and you want to find
information about golf sites that allow banner advertising, then you should enter
+"banner advertising" +golf
into the search box. The quote marks tell the search engine to find sites that specified
"banner advertising" keywords in that order, the +golf tells the engine you are
only interested in sites about golf. The "+" signs indicate that you want these
keywords to appear on the site in the order you have entered them.
You may need to modify this search slightly for the different engines, each search engine
has help available to you. Most of the top search engines will recognize this type of
query.
Use specialist search engines
Another way of making your online time more effective is to find a specialist search
engine dedicated to your subject area.
Again you can begin your search on the AskJeeves site http://www.askjeeves.com. Let's
assume you were writing about business opportunities on the Net and you wanted to find a
search engine that will search only those types of sites. On the AskJeeves page you could
get this information by asking the question
"Where can I find a business opportunity search engine?"
You will not need to enter the quote marks. Of course you should replace "business
opportunity" with the subject you are interested in.
AskJeeves will return all of the search engines dedicated to your topic. You can then
visit these specialist engines and perform your searches there. A great place to start!
To help you with your research, we have compiled a list of useful sites which you can get
from our autoresponder at RESEARCH@GETPUB.COM ?SUBJECT=EZ.
This list is updated approximately monthly and everyone requesting the list will be
emailed when the list changes.
Other resources you can use:
To finish, here are other resources you can use to find information on your chosen topic.
We will be discussing these in future articles which are posted at
http://www.getpub.com/archives.htm?ez
Specialist Subject Sites
There are many sites on the web dedicated to a single subject. You may find many of them
from an AskJeeves search and on the major search engines. Two places to look at
immediately are:
The BBC Webguide - Find websites appropriate to your topic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/webguide/
Research a wide range of subjects at Beaucoup
http://www.beaucoup.com
Keep an eye on the News
A good place to learn about your subject can be from newspapers, magazines and trade
periodicals many of which have an online presence.
Try these two sites:
The Internet Public Library
http://ipl.sils.umich.edu/
Online magazines at The Electronic Newsstand
http://www.enews.com
Network with other online authors and publishers
Email lists, forums and Newsgroups can also be good places to ask questions specific to
your topic. To narrow down the places specific to your subject try these two sites:
A comprehensive list of Forums and Mailing lists
http://www.forumone.com
Another site for Mailing lists, Forums and Newsgroups
http://www.liszt.com
and if they are not enough how about Ezines
A good place to start is http://ezinesearch.com.
And don't forget our Ezine !Get Published!
http://www.getpub.com/archives.htm?ez or to subscribe send a blank email to
getpub-subscribe@onelist.com?Subject=ez
Summary
Hopefully you are now a little wiser where to start looking to research that next book or
article. In upcoming articles we will look at each of these resources in more detail and
show you how you can use them to save time.
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Greg Spence
Webmaster of Get Published! http://www.getpub.com
Want to know how to promote your books or articles online? This newsletter is for you!
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This page was last updated Monday, November 20, 2006 01:49:31 PM |
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