Level 1 tutorial task on electronic information retrieval

Work in pairs, each spending 2 hours on one of the three information retrieval strategies below. See how much information you can find about conservation of the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), suitable for an essay. Each pair will give a verbal report to the group, lasting about 15 minutes, in the next tutorial on 28 November. The report should be on how much information you were able to find, its quality, where, and how easily, not on the cheetahs themselves.

Compare the search modifiers AND, OR and NOT, and using the latin name.

Strategy 1 - The Athens resources

Search the Athens resources relevant to biological sciences:

Strategy 2 - WWW Search Engines

These are of two types, with human editors who classify sites, or with programs (crawlers) that do this automatically. Metacrawlers submit searches to several other search engines at once.

Strategy 3 - Lists of web sites

Look for known web sites, e.g. of conservation organisations. Try pages listed in chapter 17 of:

Dussart, G. (2002). Biosciences on the internet: a student’s guide. John Wiley.
This is in the library on 3-day loan.