The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher [Paperback]

Randolph Hock (Author), Gary Price (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0910965684 | ISBN-13: 978-0910965682 | Edition: 1

A guide for anyone who makes use of the Internet for research, including librarians, teachers, students, business researchers, and writers, this book details what serious users have to know to fully take advantage of Internet search tools and resources. Newsgroups, image resources, and reference resources are covered, as are the major tools-search engines, directories, and portals-and strategies needed to access these resources. For those with little to moderate searching experience, friendly, easy-to-follow guidelines to the world of Internet research are provided. For experienced searchers, new perspectives on content and techniques are discussed.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As a high-profile Internet trainer of long experience, with both library and information industry experience, Hock is well qualified." -- Library and Information Science Research

"Ran Hock is the Mario Andretti of Web searching." -- Chris Sherman, coauthor, The Invisible Web

About the Author

Randolph Hock is the owner of Online Strategies, a company that trains Internet researchers and creates and presents courses on searching the web for professional associations, government agencies, schools, and businesses. He is the author of The Extreme Searcher's Guide to Web Search Engines, a frequent contributor and columnist for professional publications, including Online and The CyberSkeptic's Guide to Internet Research, and is active in the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). He has held management and training positions with DIALOG and Knight-Ridder Information Services, has been a reference librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was the first Data Services Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Vienna, Viginia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 356 pages
• Publisher: Information Today, Inc.; 1 edition (February 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0910965684
• ISBN-13: 978-0910965682
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,029,852 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ran Hock divides his work time between writing and teaching. On the teaching side, he specializes in customized courses teaching people how to use the Internet effectively (through his one-person company, Online Strategies). His courses have been offered--in the U.S. and eleven other countries -- to companies, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, schools, universities, and associations. On the writing side, he has written The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook (now in its Third Edition, CyberAge Books, 2010), The Extreme Searcher's Guide to Web Search Engines (CyberAge Books, 1999, 2001), Yahoo! to the Max (CyberAge Books, 2005), and The Traveler's Web (CyberAge Books, 2007). He has also been a chemistry teacher, a librarian at two universities, and has held training and management positions with DIALOG Information Services and Knight-Ridder Information. He lives in Vienna, Virginia, with his wife, Pamela, and they have two sons, Matthew and Stephen, and one daughter, Elizabeth. One of Ran's passions is travel, and he hopes to someday also have time to return to his hobby of genealogy.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good advice lost in the details..., February 25, 2005

By 

Steven B. (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher (Paperback)

As the author points out in this book's introduction, Internet searching gets more difficult as the number of Web pages on the Internet increases. Finding what you want isn't simply a matter of entering the right keywords in a search engine. You need to know how to search and which search engine will work best for you. You need to know where to start on the Internet if the information you are searching for can be found without using a search engine or is found on what the author calls "the invisible Web," the part of the Internet that hasn't been mapped and indexed by search engines.

"The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook" is a practical-advice guide to Internet searching. The author looks at Web directories and search engines and tells you where to start when you are doing different kinds of research. There is also advice for conducting research in newsgroups and mailing lists, as well as a catalogue of online references such as encyclopedias and dictionaries. A chapter on news sources and online shopping Web sites rounds out the book.

If you are patient, you can get a lot of good advice from this book. I discovered, for example, that one search engine, AltaVista, permits "NEAR" searches for keywords within ten words of one another on Web pages. I didn't know this kind of search was available. I also discovered a handful of excellent directories and Web sites for conducting Internet research.

However, this book doesn't serve well as a reference. The headings are not particularly descriptive, which makes finding information difficult. The author does a good job of explaining each search engine's features, but the features are presented in long bulleted lists, which makes it hard to compare the search engines. A table in Chapter 4 attempts to compare different search engines, but the table is so crowded with data, it is nearly impossible to read or understand.

The author rightfully points out that Internet researchers often neglect newsgroups and mailing lists in their research, but his instructions for searching for newsgroups with Google are out of date and he doesn't explain how to use Outlook Express or another newsgroup reader to subscribe to newsgroups. Worse, he lumps Yahoo! groups in with newsgroups, when really the two are quite different, as Yahoo! groups are held privately by Yahoo! members (and for that matter, the author might have considered explaining how to create a Yahoo! group on your own). Only three pages are devoted to mailing lists. I think this topic could've used more attention.

The author obviously knows his stuff and is passionate about helping others conduct research on the Internet. I just wish this book was organized more carefully and was professionally published. As another reviewer noted, a graphic image (of a leaf?) obscures the page numbers. That is unforgivable in a reference book like this one, where you often have to consult the index and turn to a particular page. I got angry more than once at not being able to tell which page I was looking at.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you search the web, you need this book, January 29, 2004

By 

Mary E. Bates "[e-mail]" (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher (Paperback)

Wow. Ran Hock's done it again. I'm a jaded, long-time web researcher, but I opened up this book and wondered how I'd managed before now. Ran offers detailed descriptions of search engines and their key features, techniques for finding multimedia content, reviews of the major web directories, tips for searching news, and even a nice "Internet reference shelf." This book should be on every web searcher's desk.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure trove of information, March 6, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher (Paperback)

Finding things on the massive database known as the internet can be quite the daunting task. Now in an updated and expanded third edition, "The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher" serves as a complete and comprehensive guide to using the internet to its fullest extent to help one find what they want the quickest way possible. Google and Yahoo are not the last line for finding things, and Randolph Hock hopes to help readers use more advanced techniques to make for quicker, more efficient searches. "The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook" is a treasure trove of information that belongs in any community library technology collection.