search engines

search engines

Basic Research Tools

Basic Research Tools

, Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research
Transitioning to college research requires better tools, and the library provides many resources that will help students submit better work than can be generated through free web search engines like Google or Bing.  The easiest place to start is with the EBSCO Discovery Service, a meta-search engine that searches most of IU East’s databases at once, which can be found on the library’s home page under the section that says “Search EBSCO (Articles)”.  This provides the single box searching experience that may be the most familiar to users of Google or other popular search engines.  This returns material from academic journals, trade journals, and newspapers.  It can be set to give only recently published material, or only vetted academic writings.  … Continued
New Interface for a Major Research Tool

New Interface for a Major Research Tool

, Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Website
The easiest way to begin searching for research materials at IU East is to start typing in the blank labelled “Search EBSCO (Articles)” on the library’s home page.  This search blank is a meta-search, which means that it looks through many of the library’s databases simultaneously.  Most research at IU East starts here. The software behind this is called the EBSCO Discovery Service, and it is getting a facelift.  The search interface will change, and some of the features and buttons are moving around.  Some new features are being added.  The clean-looking search blank continues to put some of the most popular filters right there with it (for example, restricting just to things that have full text immediately available, or … Continued
Image Research

Image Research

, , , Matt Dilworth, Research
Looking for images and not sure what research tools can help you find them? Images may not be as easily discoverable since many tools designed for searching text use metadata (the tags or descriptions or other keywords on a webpage) which may not adequately describe the image content you need. Whatever your reasons for an image search, such as a larger resolution version, learning about its provenance, or determining the copyright holder so you can legally and ethically use it, we have some tips to help you in the image search process! You can try ‘Reverse’ image searching, sometimes called content-based image retrieval. Instead of searching by typing in what you want to find, you upload a picture you already … Continued
Tin Eye and Image Searching

Tin Eye and Image Searching

, Matt Dilworth, Uncategorized
When I was asked what my favorite recent website was for the last blog, I immediately thought of Tin Eye (http://www.tineye.com), a reverse photo lookup site, where you upload or link to a picture and it finds matches or near matches, regardless of whether they’ve been altered, cropped, or resized.  If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to talk about image searching on the web a little more today. There have been efforts to make good photo lookups since the early 90s – the metadata tags that most image search engines rely on are not well suited for multimedia.  And most engines use them – Google Images (http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi) and PicSearch (http://www.picsearch.com/), two commonly used examples, both search text about the pictures … Continued