Searching for documents, text files, images, sounds, software files, and so on...

Ok, there are a lot of methods to search for a some kind of file on the net:

if you are 'surfing' on the net with a graphical browser (like Netscape or Internet Explorer), and you need some kind of document, you can use a search engine. A search engine is more or less a robot (named friendly 'spider') who walks through the Web and collects addresses (URLs) of HTML documents (HyperText Markup Language) ranking them on the basis of particular rules. So, when an user ask to a search engine (like Altavista for example) for a specific word, the search engine looks inside its database in order to find that word and, therefore, the address of document which contains the word. As each search engine uses its own rules, result of a particular query maybe pretty different according to the engine which you are using. So, you should know different search engines.

To know more about this subject, look at: ENGINES: guide for beginners. To know more about search engines rules, about how to query a search engine, look at SEARCH ENGINES: some engines' rules. However, if you already know those rules, but you need a kind of reference because you can't remember something, take a look at this QUICK REFERENCE.

Anyway there are many kind of engines, in fact there are GENERAL search engines, SPECIALIZED search engines, MULTIPLE search engines and, in addition you can search stuff by COUNTRY. Finally, there are sites featuring huge LISTS of search engines available on the net.

However the Internet is not only the Web. The Internet is also the 'Gopherspace', for example. If you have a gopher client, you can use it to navigate through the gopherspace, but however you can also use your browser: by typing 'gopher://address_of_gopher_server' instead of 'http://web_address'. So you can navigate through the 'gopherspace' in order to find documents. A gopher server shows information by means of a menu-driven interface, and you can 'navigate' through these menu. To know more about gophers, look at: GOPHER HELP. Anyway you can 'browse' the gopherspace but you can't search something by means of keywords. For this reason someone invented VERONICA, a tool to search stuff inside of the gopherspace by means of keywords. Another similar tool is JUGHEAD.

But the Internet is not only Web or Gophers, because you can search for files with ARCHIE. Archie search for files within FTP servers.

What? Are you searching for text-based documents? Well, then you can use 'Wais' : it searches for keywords within texts. To know more about WAIS look at: WAIS HELP.

Ok, you are searching for highly specialized documents...Well, then you can try in the BITNET'S WORLD. You can find mailing lists of Universities there. In addition, there are mailing lists (lists where people discusses about a specific subject) that hold archives where all e-mail sent or received inside of the list are stored. There you can retrieve information by means of LISTSERV.

No, you don't know what you are searching for...you need some lists to use as a starting point; look at the YANOFF and the DECEMBER lists.

Searching for people

Ok, are you searching for e-mail addresses? Well, there are several ways to reach this goal, in fact you can use WEB tools or OTHER tools available on the net.

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