General Hints About Searching the Internet 

There are certain topics and types of information that are well-represented on the Internet: computers (of course), business, entertainment, regional information, educational institutions (especially universities), collected trivia, transcriptions of primary sources, personal opinions, or information from a specific project or study. This does not mean that you will always find the information that you want for a topic on your first or second attempt. The information on the Internet is not well-organized. 

Other topics and types of information are less well-represented on the Internet: performing arts, humanities, information from non-wealthy regions, countries, and groups, in-depth, contemplation of a topic, large texts with complex reasoning. 

For the most part, information is found on the Internet by searching for a few key words. Searching the Internet is a quick way to get basic information on a topic; you can search many sources at once, however the Internet is not always reliable—sources of information may move or disappear; search engines may be overwhelmed by requests or occasionally be down. 

The Internet is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, around the world. Individual sites will, however be difficult to reach at their own times of peak use, just as you will have trouble during your local peak time (usually 8-5 weekdays). 

Because information producers can use the Internet to avoid the time-consuming print publication process, information on the Internet can be very up-to-date. However, if information is not clearly dated, you may not know how recent the information is. In addition it can be difficult to judge the accuracy or respectability of information you find on the Internet. Material that includes the name of the person responsible for the information and date of last revision indicates an organized approach to providing information. 

Do not assume that just because information appears on your computer screen, that it is accurate or widely accepted. The following site has pointers to good articles by librarians and other information specialists on evaluating web sites and other helpful information, such as how to cite electronic reference sources for papers and other publications. 
http://astro.uchicago.edu/outreach/cuip/loft/eval.html  
 
Despite the fact that all of these services index the World Wide Web and provide ways to search for information, on-line search engines do not all have the same information. If you don’t find what you are looking for in one of them, try another.