Choose your search engine wisely, since each engine has different qualities. Because no single search engine covers more than about one third of the resources on the web, try your search in several different search engines. There are five basic types: Portals, Directories, Visual Search Engines, Full-text Search Engines, and Multiple Search Engines.   For more reviews of search engines, check out Search Engine Showdown or Search Engine Watch.

• Portals--groupings of quality Internet resources (such as excellent web sites, electronic journals, discussion groups, research institutions, and libraries) on a particular topic.  Consult the Pick Your Topic web resources links from the Library Home Page for subject specific portals.

• Directories--structured search engines that lead you to the home pages or main content pages.  Good for searching broad subjects.  Some provide a hierarchical structure that allows you to scan categories to find related pages.

• Visual Search Engines--See the relationship among related web resources!

• Full-text Search Engines--finds individual pages that include your key terms.  Good for searches on specific phrases.

• Multiple Search Engines--expands your search to multiple engines but beware of slowness and loss of specialized search functions!