The ELAC Theatrepedia Internet Search Tools

Contents

Related Pages: Electronic Text Collections, Theatre-Link.com, Theatre Central.


Web Searching Techniques
Use several short words or phrases, observe the results, add or refine your search expression until you get it down to a manageable, on-topic list. Unfortunately, with many search engines the most relevant documents to you may not appear in the top 40 results. This is because search engines do not rank relevancy so much as they rank the frequency of keywords, the number of external links to the documents, the number of times other people have clicked on a link in the search engine's site, the document's title and various other things. The end result is that you are usually more successful typing in two very specific keywords joined by "AND" than you are typing in one general keyword or a specific phrase.

Note also that search engines employ something called Boolean logic, which is different from Vulcan logic :). Boolean logic mainly refers to "OR" and "AND" and "NOT". If you type in several words separated by "OR" or a comma, the search engine will find all documents that contain any of the words, but not necessarily all the words. If you use "AND" or a +, the search engine will display only documents that contain all the words. Using "NOT" will display documents that do not contain the word that follows "NOT". As with algebra, parentheses can be used to group words. Finally, phrases should be put in quotes (") so the search engine will treat them as one string of words rather than as separate words joined by an implied "OR".

Type In:Get Out:
"King Richard the III"The Tragedy of King Richard the III.
King Richard III (or King or Richard or III)King Lear, King Richard II, King Henry VIII...
King and Richard and IIIThe Tragedy of King Richard the III.
Agamemnon and Aeschylus and not (Seneca or O'Neill)Agamemnon (by Aeschylus)


Academic research tools

ERIC
Voice of the Shuttle
Guide to Theatre Resources on the Internet
Internet Sleuth
Jogle's Favorite Theatre Related Resources
Theatre-link.com
Theatropolis (International theatre)


Theatre and Arts Resources
ArtsNet links
Theatre resources at World Wide Art Resources
Theatre school resources at World Wide Art Resources
Yahoo - Performing Arts - Theatre
Theatre and Drama section of the WWW Virtual Library
Library of Congress search tools


General Web search tools
Yahoo
Infoseek
Alta Vista
Lycos
Webcrawler
Four11.com
BigYellow.com


Usenet search tools:
The usenet is a collection of thousands of forums to which people post messages, replies and pictures. The following Websites contain searchable archives of usenet posts.
Deja News
Reference.com


Books and newspapers
CYBERSTACKS
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Boston Book Review
InkPot-Global list of newspapers
Los Angeles Times
New York Times

"History is the autobiography of a madman"
- Alexander Herzen, Dr. Krupov.


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Updated 08/16/98
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