As you begin to move around the World Wide Web, you may feel overwhelmed by the task of finding the correct site for your particular research paper, classroom topic, or other educational activity. This is not surprising as the Web and the Internet continue to grow exponentially by the week, day, hour!

You needn't despair, however. There are a few things you can do to narrow the possibilities (I won't try to discourage you from randomly roaming the Web, for that is one of the joys of the Internet : serendipitous discoveries).

A brief word about some of the nomenclature you will be learning here:

A search engine such as Alta Vista uses automated "web crawlers" appropriately called 'spiders' that search for every instance of a given keyword. For instance, if you wanted to look for information regarding French films, you are likely to get thousands of 'hits' at a search engine site. Even if you were to narrow your keywords to 'Truffaut films' you would end up with thousands of 'hits' linking you to sites as diverse as Truffaut fan club discussion groups to any site with the word 'films' in it!

A directory such as Yahoo!, on the other hand, uses that old system called human beings to edit sites that will be accessed by users based on relevancy, information updating, site aesthetics, or any number of criteria the producers of the site deem worthy. Thus, you can go to a search directory with its hierarchical listings and look initially in general topic headings. To follow our previous example, you could go into a 'folder' called Films, then into Foreign Films, followed by French Films, Truffaut, followed by specific film titles if you wished.

The two very different search approaches have their own requisite relevance. A search engine is extremely helpful in detailed searches. If you are very specific about what it is you are looking for, search engines such as Alta Vista are the better choice. If you are not quite sure regarding the specific topic for your search and need to start from a general heading first and then narrow your selection methodically, the search directories (such as Yahoo!) are your best bet.

The first thing you can do if you use Netscape Navigator or Netscape Communicator is to head to Netscape's very own site filled with nothing but various search engines. To get there all you have to do is click on the 'Search' button on your Netscape Toolbar.

Once there, you can choose from a variety of search engines including Yahoo!, HotBot, Excite, and Alta Vista.

For more scholarly research you can use the Melvyl database of libraries. It utilizes a search engine so that you can type in a few keywords and in no time at all, you are looking through the vast resources of a library that may be unavailable to you by other means. You may also wish to go to the Library Of Congress and start your research there.

Now that you know where to begin your search, you'll need to learn how to search. Most search engines and directories use what are known as Boolean Search commands or a variant of the commands. You will be using the logical operators and, or, and not most of the time.

Let's look for Francois Truffaut's film "Day For Night". You could start with a search using the title, typing in 'day and for and night'. Since Internet search engines don't follow strict Boolean rules, they will often let you use '+' to include words or phrases and '-' to exclude words or phrases.

This first search result will likely give you far too many 'hits' as search engines will look for every document that has the three words (day, for , and night) in it. It might be easier to put quotation marks around the phrase "day for night" to alert the search engine that you want the words as this exact phrase not these three words simply anywhere in the document. It might help to include a 'truffaut +' to the inquiry.

Now if you wanted to search for a review or critique of the film you would use the Boolean operator 'or'. You would have typed at this point :

truffaut + "day for night" and (review or criticism)
You have now limited your search to documents that include the word truffaut, the phrase day for night, and either the word review or criticism. Please note the parentheses!

You're now ready to narrow the search even further with the Boolean operator 'not'. Because you're still likely to end up with many more sites than you probably need, you may want to eliminate sites that also include images. Now you would type :

truffaut + "day for night" and (review or criticism) not images.

If you do not find what you want even after this, you may still need to refine your search. Also, many sites that use search engines have their own preferences which will be elucidated for you under a link such as 'help' or 'Advanced Search' .