Topic outline

  • General

    Information and the web

    What do we mean by the term 'information'? How can we find out more from the internet?

    Work through the course below to find out more...

  • Topic 1

    Introduction

    • The World Wide Web is a vast information resource. This unit will provide you with the foundation skills to use search engines confidently to locate both information and images on the Web. You will also...

  • Topic 2

    1 Accessing online information

    • In this unit you will be looking at information that can be found on the Web. You may already have explored the Web and discovered what an enormous amount of information it contains. Alternatively you...

  • Topic 3

    2 How to do it

    • In this section we will cover the following topics:
    • One way to find what you are looking for on the Web is to start from sites that you know are likely to have useful ‘links’ on them, like the main Open University pages or the Open University Library pages....
    • What do you do if you don't know the URL of the website you are looking for, or haven't been able to browse to it? The Web is not like a library – it isn't carefully organised and catalogued, and it is...
    • Search engines can be very good at finding information since they cover such a huge number of web pages. Unfortunately it can be difficult to find the one you want in the huge number of hits that they...
    • Most browsers allow you to keep a record of links to websites that you have found useful. These are called ‘Bookmarks’ in Firefox and ‘Favorites’ in Internet Explorer, and may have other names, such as...
    • As with websites, one of the easiest ways of searching for images is to use a search engine such as Google. You will see that above the Google search box are some words that allow you to select what you...
    • You have seen how easy it is to find what what you want on the Web. When you quote any information or use any images that you have not written or created yourself it is important to ensure that you reference...
    • 1 When referencing an image what details should be included alongside the image?

  • Topic 4

    3 An Internet search example

    • In this section we consider searching for information about your ancestors. We cannot hope to cover all the techniques and information required to research genealogy, family history and local history;...
    • An immediate temptation is to head straight for a search engine such as Google and enter your family name, but a moment's thought should warn you that the results will be disappointing. This is particularly...
    • An alternative to using general purpose search engines is to make use of focused search engines that only index known genealogical sites. For example, the Genealogical Society of the UK and Ireland (GenUKI)...
    • An alternative to searching by simple text matching is to look inside a database specifically structured for genealogical searching. Probably the largest such database is freely available on the Internet....
    • In order to show some of the possibilities provided by the Internet, we have gone straight to searching for material online. A careful family historian would take a more measured approach, starting with...

  • Topic 5

    4 What's going on

    • Search sites are powered by a search engine: a program that can search for web pages that match your query, and then return a list of hits. The list of hits arrives at your browser as a web page, complete...
    • It is not practical for the search engine to go looking at every page on the Web whenever it receives a search request. Instead, the search engine consults a vast index to the Web. This index is prepared...
    • When you submit your query, the search engine will look up each word of the query in the index and construct a list of hits. Hits are pages that contain all of the words in your query.
    • It is common for a web search to return hundreds, or even millions, of hits; certainly too many to check. But uncannily, the first few hits often contain just what you were looking for. How do search engines...
    • You have seen how general purpose search engines work. In this section we consider some of the additional techniques that are important to genealogical searches.
    • Earlier you saw how a genealogical database records relationships between people. A lineage linked database allows queries such as ‘Ada Rosewell the daughter of John Rosewell’ and makes possible the creation...
    • You will have seen that most genealogical websites and software can match names despite differences in spelling. For example, FamilySearch provides a check box to choose matches using exact spelling; if...

  • Topic 6

    5 What it means

    • Let's start by brainstorming the impact that access to information on the Web has had on you and on the people with whom you are in contact.
    • The quality of the information you will find on the Web varies enormously as there is no editorial control. Anybody can establish a website, claiming to be whoever they want to be. As Mark Twain put it:...
    • The Open Library suggests the following mnemonic to help you: PROMPT, for

  • Topic 7

    6 Where to learn more

  • Topic 8

    Appendix

    • In the table below is a checklist to help you apply the PROMPT criteria, adapted from the Open University Safari. You can use this to help you evaluate a website.
    • This page has links to a number of useful resources on genealogy and family history that may of help to you if you wish to research your family tree. Some of these resources are free to use; others are...

  • Topic 9

    References and Acknowledgements