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Web
search for local communities in the
Highlands
of Scotland: An online self-tutoring guide
This self-tutoring guide and online learning resource is designed to assist you to acquire Web search and evaluation skills, learn about tips and techniques that will improve your searching, and how to explore the Web as a rich information resource. The guide focuses on Google and how to acquire “Google literacy”, and enables you to learn to use the numerous Google products, tools, and applications, and how to get the most out of Google’s many search services, whether for personal, leisure, or business interests.
Additionally, the guide also describes a diverse range of other Web search tools that are worth exploring as an alternative or as an adjunct to Google, together with an annotated listing of 100 outstanding websites and resources, grouped under a number of topic headings. The tutorial has been primarily designed for local communities in the Highlands of Scotland, and many of the examples used for search strategies focus on this region.
The guide consists of a package of 4 self-tutoring modules in PDF format, each liberally illustrated with screenshots of Google pages and many other websites and resources. For those with slow Internet connections, a choice of file sizes is offered for download purposes: “Standard” or “Minimum size”, the latter with somewhat diminished quality of the screenshot illustrations.
- Module I: How to get the most out of Google Web search
47 pp.
(File size choice: 2.5MB “Standard”, or 905KB “Minimum size”)
This module deals primarily with Google Web search, but also offers a potted history of Google, provides an overview of Google’s page ranking algorithms, and describes how Google works and tracks down information on the Web and delivers the results to you.
- Module II: A concise guide to Google products, services, applications and other offerings 54
pp.
(File size choice: 4.7MB “Standard”, or 1.5MB “Minimum size”)
A comprehensive inventory of Google’s numerous other products, services, applications, and desktop extensions. Over a hundred products are briefly described and evaluated, setting out their principal features, range of tools, and utility.
- Module III: Alternatives to Google: some other search tools worth a try 25 pp.
(File size choice: 2.6MB “Standard”, or 818KB “Minimum size”)
Examines and describes a number of other search engines and tools that you might wish to try, or which might be used alongside Google from time to time. It also offers a critical evaluation of speciality and meta search engines, real-time search engines, question & answer search engines, as well as a number of vertical and blog search engines.
- Module IV: The best of the Web: a guide to some of the most information-rich resources on the Internet
44 pp.
(File size choice: 5.9MB “Standard”, or 1.53MB “Minimum
size”)
Reviews and describes 100 of what arguably are among the very best, most authoritative, and most information-rich websites and resources.
Online access to the tutorial (4 PDF files, a total of 170 pages in A4 size format) is available at a nominal charge of £10, and this entitles you to unlimited access for a period of 12 months. You are free to download and print copies of all four tutorials provided they are for your own personal use.
How to order and register for online access:
(1) Print out the online Subscription order
form.
(2) Send the completed form together with your remittance of £10 in cash, by
cheque, or postal order to the address below (we do not accept credit cards). Please tick the box on the order form to indicate that you agree with the terms and conditions of online access, as set out on the subscription order form.
(3) Click on to our Registration page and complete the registration form to create a user account to access the online tutorials. Online access is via ID and password. You can assign your own ID and password and indicate this in the appropriate fields on the registration form, together with your full name and address, and email address. Upon approval of the account (subject to receipt of the £10 payment in advance) you will be notified by an auto-generated email message that the account has been activated and you can then go online.
Terms and conditions of online access:
While material contained in the guide is subject to copyright, authorized users may view, retrieve, display and print all content. Making one or more copies of the modules in hard copy form is permitted, but such copies must be for personal use and may not be sold. Downloading PDF files to hard disk is permitted provided that the files are not made available to anyone who is not an authorized user. Recompiling, copying, publication or republication of text beyond "fair use", in any form or medium whatsoever, may be done only with specific written permission from Hans
Zell.
Online access:
(Registered subscribers only)
Online access to the four modules is at www.hanszell.co.uk/websearch/download/index.shtml.
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