Searching the Web

  Overview

Given that the Internet continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, a major problem has become how to find relevant information when there are hundreds of millions of web pages located on hundreds of thousands of servers around the world. The initial reaction to the Web as an information resource can be overwhelming, much like the first experience of walking into a large library and seeing row after row of books. As libraries moved from card catalogs to electronic catalogs to searchable article databases, finding resources became much easier. 

The Internet has been considered a major research source only for a few years; thus ways to search it are still in their infancy. In this section we will cover the major Internet search engines (portals), how to query them, tools (e.g., bots) that can query a number of search engines simultaneously, where to search for scholarly articles and specific criminal justice resources, specialty search tools that can be used to locate everything from out of print books to computer parts, and how to submit your newly constructed web pages for inclusion on search engines so they will rank highly on searches by others. At the end of this chapter you should be able in a few simple steps to exhaustively search the Internet for any criminal justice information that is available. Hopefully, this will cut down on the emails I get daily from folks wanting me to conduct searches for them!

Attitudes toward the overall value of materials found on the Web vary. Some are wary because anyone can post a Web site, whether they can back up their ideas with facts or not. Some faculty have not allowed students to use the Web for research for that reason. However, materials on the Web can be used effectively if they are judged by the same standards as other research; e.g. is the author a known authority; does the page have a bibliography and/or hyperlinks to support its claims; are the statements plausible; do they agree or disagree with what you have read elsewhere, etc. Knowing the differences between “sensational,?“popular,?“substantive news/general interest,?and “scholarly?publications helps too, as all of these types of information are available. Becoming a discriminating Web researcher is a must. 

1. Which Are the Major Internet Search Engines?

PowerPoint Slide Show

The Internet contains hundreds of millions of Web pages and continues to grow rapidly. There may one day be as many Web pages as there are phone numbers.  Information you might need might not be available on a Web page; it could be buried within resources not easily located, such as online databases, newsgroup messages, or FTP sites. Finally, material referenced on the Web may be available only offline; books, journals, old newspaper articles, and some government reports and data fall into this category.  

Search engines were developed in the mid-1990s to help Web surfers locate information. These included Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, HotBot, Infoseek and Excite. Later these sites started to refer to themselves as Web portals, offering direct links to services such as travel, maps, browser-based email, shopping, etc.  Some engines have links to 100 million plus web pages in their databases (Fast Search, AltaVista, Google). Northern Light has the largest collection, over 200 million pages as of 2/2000, while HotBot is the most frequently updated. However, none of these contains even twenty percent of the total pages currently available over the Web. It is essential to remember that search engines don't really search the Internet to find the materials you want, just their own databases.

Yahoo is actually a hierarchically arranged index; its a good place to start looking for categorizable things, but bad for conceptual searches. 

The problem with using any of these sites is that search replies may be in the thousands, with only a few "hits" truly relevant to what you want to find. Much time can be wasted looking at irrelevant search results and going from search engine to search engine to see if they offer different Web pages.

By understanding how these databases are constructed, how sites are indexed, how best to query them, and how they report their findings, you can maximize your chances of finding what you want. All search engines allow Web page creators to submit their sites for inclusion. Yahoo is one of the few that actually has reviewers look at submissions, and declines to add sites they deem useless. Yahoo began as a hierarchical index. You can either drill down through the appropriate categories and subcategories until you find a list of what you want, or enter key words that will reveal where that subcategory is in Yahoo's hierarchy. For example, if I wanted to find criminal justice programs in Florida I could start at Education, go to Higher Education, then to Colleges and Universities, then By Region, then United States, then Florida, then go to the Web sites of the 90 listed Florida colleges and universities. This would take hours! To speed things up try entering "criminal justice programs Florida" in Yahoo's search box. Currently, the result is one hit (Florida State University School of Criminology and Criminal Justice) under the Yahoo category:

Regional > U.S. States > Florida > Cities > Tallahassee > Education > College and University > Public > Florida State University > Departments and Programs

Thus, on Yahoo there are two options; spend hours looking for what you want or search quickly and get little you can use. None of the other criminal justice programs, beside ours, in Florida can be found quickly on Yahoo. Yea!

Almost all search engines, except Yahoo, scan the Web continuously to find new pages to add to their collections. Once a spider--a robot search and index tool--finds a Web server, it looks for all the HTML pages within it, pulls back the information it wants about each page, and adds this information to the search engine's own index. The actual pages do not reside within the search engine's database. 

The key to finding what you want using a search engine is the query tool. Typically this is an on-line form into which you type key words and check off menu choices, e.g. "search for all words" v. "search for words as a phrase." 

Some search tools support the use of Boolean logic, a standard in traditional library informational databases. If a Web search engine uses Boolean logic, it supports use of the logic operators, OR, AND and NOT. If the user enters none of these operators, Boolean systems will use AND as the default in evaluating queries. Below is a detailed description of how Boolean operators work.

Even if you understand Boolean logic, this may not help much, because search engines may not support it. Most search sites incorporate their own proprietary query languages. Alta Vista used a cryptic system of plus and minus signs, but recently added "dynamic categorization," a thesaurus-like feature that helps to narrow searches considerably. Yahoo would search for the words "and" and "or" if you inserted them in a search string, resulting in thousands of additional useless hits. Northern Light supports three search formats: Boolean, natural language searching, and simple words. To use natural language searching try typing a question such as "Who is the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court?" into the search bar. Unfortunately, when I did I was returned 85,000 hits, but none of the top ones mentioned Rehnquist. Simple words searching proved more fruitful. By entering the following:

Needless to say, the results can be quite frustrating. When I enter my own name on search engines, "Cecil Greek Naked" shows up on some as the most highly ranked Cecil Greek page of the several thousand pages I've created or maintain. The page has my name in the title and once in the text. 

Below is what happened when I used Northern Light for such a search. Note that only one of the top four hits is for one of my pages, the rest are pages that mention me. Not good!

Northern Light's Power Search Query Form

NetFerret
http://www.ferretsoft.com/netferret/

BullsEye
http://www.intelliseek.com/

Drowning in Infoglut? Intelligent Filters to the Rescue! (Sort of...)
http://www4.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_1035.html

Alexa
http://www.alexa.com/

Intelligent Software Agents
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/

 

3. What if the Materials Needed Are Highly Specialized or Covered in Scholarly Literature?

A number of criminal justice topics are so specific that there may be very little scholarly information available over the Web, and a search of articles in journals databases is required. I get two to three emails a day asking for information that in all likelihood is nowhere on the Web itself, but might be locatable by searching the right database for articles that have appeared in scholarly journals or other trustworthy sources such as government generated research or reports.

There are a number of sites that offer access to an index of scholarly journal articles; some offer abstracts. Most charge for article retrieval. Major sites include Ingenta (formerly Carl UnCoverWeb) and JStor. Below is is a sample Ingenta search result.

Many Articles Are Available Only Through Library Subscriptions

JStor offers access to all back issues of selected journals. For example, they have every issue of the American Journal of Sociology from 1894 to 1994. PubList allows users to search from its list of 150,000 journals by keyword; then provides information on how to contact the journal, whether they have a Website, etc. Unfortunately, they list only two criminology journals. 

While many of these sites allow you to search for articles for free and read abstracts, some charge for letting you access the full text of the articles, plus copyright fees. Rather than paying $10.00 or more per article to retrieve them, students can use the bibliographic information to go to the library and pull the journal from the shelves. If the library doesn't subscribe to the journal and has an online form for periodical article requests, you can copy and paste the information from your search findings into the form. If the library will Fax the articles to your computer, you never have to leave home!

A few search tools, like Northern Light and Lexis-Nexis, offer simultaneous search of both scholarly articles and journalistic materials. Lexis-Nexis is best known for its specialization in legal resources such as case decisions, law review articles, and legislation, but also offers comprehensive news services on a subscription basis on the following topics: business, finance, and economics; markets and industry; fact finding; general news; government and politics; people; and scientific, technical and medical information.

Electric Library is an excellent resource for more popular or journalistic resources. Their database search combines magazines, books, newspapers, pictures, maps, and radio/TV transcripts.

Note that this search found 6 magazine and 23 newspaper articles, plus one transcript.

The above sites can assist in searching for previously published journalistic materials. In order to track current news stories one needs to build an online, updateable newspaper/magazine page or set up a news bot service. Crayon assists you in building a customized newspaper choosing from the specific sections of thousands of online newspapers and other media sources. As these newspaper sections are updated daily, your personal Crayon newspaper continues to provide up to date news.

News bots can help you be selective by searching the websites of newspapers, magazines, and e-zines to find new articles that are of specific interest to you. For example, Excite News Tracker has a "clipping service" that includes over 300 newspapers. While I was preparing a course on transnational crimes, I requested that all stories on drug trafficking, arms trafficking, computer crimes, terrorism, child pornography, etc., be tracked. Students were asked to do the same as part of the course. Ongoing Internet discussions in Usenet Newsgroups can be tracked, too. For example, at Deja News, a user can track any discussion thread(s) going on in the 20,000 plus newsgroups available. Forum One offers access to over 300,000 Web discussion forums. If you can wade the through the rantings and ravings that seem to make up a significant percentage of any non-moderated discussion board, useful information can be obtained, particularly on more technical subjects.

There are a number of other useful sites for those doing academic research and writing. These include on-line dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, style manuals, and calculators. 

While most of the databases and resources discussed here are available for free use, some charge for access. If you are enrolled student at a university or college, you can access a number of the databases for free through your library's Web site. My university, FSU, offers Lexis-Nexis, JStor, and many others to students and faculty. Tutorials, like the one prepared by Gary Kleck below, on how to use these most efficiently,  can help students become more productive searchers. 

 4. Where can I specifically find criminal justice materials?

There are still more locations one can check for criminal justice information. Where best to look depends upon what type of information you are seeking; scholarly articles and conference papers, government reports and funded research, crime statistics, international crime trends, or more personal information such as arrest records or correctional inmate data. The latter has created considerable debate among those who want easy Internet access to all public records and privacy advocates who want such records made unavailable to ordinary citizens.

In the previous section, scholarly article databases were discussed. There are specific index and abstract databases for the social sciences, but few dedicated to criminology or criminal justice. Social science listings include: PsychInfo, Psychcrawler, Wilson Social Sciences Abstracts Full Text, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, and ERIC. ERIC offers educational research, and is a good source to search for juvenile justice-related materials such as at-risk students. Medline offers access to medical journals. Some of these databases will require entry through a university library portal. 

Criminal Justice Abstracts is the most comprehensive database available within our discipline, but can be accessed online only through a library that subscribes to it. Criminal Justice Abstracts provides citations, with abstracts, to the world's literature in criminology, including trends, crime prevention and deterrence, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, police, courts, punishment, and sentencing. Sources include comprehensive coverage of international journals, books, reports, dissertations, and unpublished papers on criminology and related disciplines.

Even more useful is the NCJRS Abstract Database, and its free! The National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database contains summaries of more than 150,000 criminal justice publications, including Federal, State, and local government reports, books, research reports, journal articles, and unpublished research such as ASC and ACJS conference papers. Many of the items in the database are directly linked to a full text copies of the materials. If not, NCJRS will mail you a copy of the documents or send items via interlibrary loan. Strangely, while the subject terms used in this database are all listed in the National Criminal Justice Thesaurus, a 300+ page reference tool listing more than 6,000 keywords, this document is not available online.

Crime statistics and other agency reports may or may not be in the NCJRS database. Below is a tutorial on specifically how to locate crime statistics.

For criminal justice researchers and students who need data to analyze for research methods and stats classes, the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data serves as the final resting place for data sets resulting from funded research projects. Unfortunately, the data sets, code books, and other materials are not organized in a user friendly way. Expert knowledge on how to import the data sets into SPSS or SAS is required. However, the archive's maintainer, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, has a summer program to provide training. According to ICPSR, the Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research offers a comprehensive, integrated program of studies in research design, statistics, data analysis, and social methodology. Basic methodological and technical training is offered, along with opportunities for advanced work in specialized areas.

International and comparative data is more difficult to find but available. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute maintains an exhaustive library on the prevention and control of criminality and deviance as well as related social problems, such as drug abuse, maladjustment, etc. The library collection includes some 6000 authors, as well as more than 300 series and 600 publishers.

An effort in index government reports, plus journalistic and Web resources on international topics is ongoing at the World Justice Information Network, directed by Sergey Chapkey. According to its mission statement, WJIN is an Internet-based system for sharing open source information on crime, justice and the rule of law among policy makers, executives, criminal justice and law enforcement officials, international organizations, researchers and other academics, students, civic activists, journalists and concerned citizens worldwide. They also offer a news story clipping service featuring international crime and criminal justice topics. ABP News provides a similar service focusing on U.S. crime stories. 

People are now looking to the Web for personal information about other people that has never been easily available--unless you hired a private detective--and was in some cases "protected." There appears to be a great deal of interest in using search tools to run criminal background checks. As of yet this service is not being made available by state agencies to private citizens. But, given that in some states like Florida where such information is subject to Sunshine laws and available as public records, it is only a matter of time before enterprising entrepreneurs set up Web sites and start charging for access. Services such as Net Detective promise to provide this kind of information.

Both court and correctional records databases are moving to the Web, but not without some controversy. The practical difficulty of getting at court and corrections documents kept the question a nonissue until the Internet changed the world. The law has always recognized that court documents were public, and theoretically they were, but the practical difficulty of reviewing those documents kept them effectively private. Forcing citizens to come to the courthouse and then charging outrageous copying fees deterred most. Technology now makes those documents 'in fact' public and instantly accessible. How citizens will use this information only time will tell. Potential employers, rental agents, and creditors would certainly want this data. I often tell my students they can use the local county clerk's database to screen potential dates as all misdemeanor and felony convictions dating back to 1984 are listed. Some states are blocking commercial use of the information and/or making finding information so difficult most can't get to what they want. 

Many states already maintain searchable online databases of convicted sexual predators and sexual offenders, as public access to these was mandated as part of legislation such as Megan's Law. Actually, the law did not require online access to the records, but states decided to do it. These databases contain current addresses and photos of convicted offenders. In 1999, a group of Oregon convicted sex offenders sued to block the opening of that state's registry. The Florida Department of Corrections offers online databases that include all inmates and those under probation or parole supervision.

Debates pitting individual privacy rights v. access to public government records are certain to continue. The United States holds a position somewhat in the middle compared to Canada and the UK. Canada offers it citizens greater privacy protections, while the UK has long held that its citizens do not have the right to access government collected information. Release of government held information is the only way to fully disclose certain illegal or unethical state actions. For example, sites that help citizens obtain FBI files and other government records under the Freedom of Information Act have appeared. 

Of course, FOIA information could be misused, just like any of these type records. The FOIA law includes a privacy provision and a personal privacy exemption to release of government records. This exemption involves a balancing of the public's interest in disclosure against the degree of invasion of privacy that would result from disclosure. If a request involves this exemption, the requester must provide a brief explanation of the public benefits from disclosure, and how that disclosure sheds light on government activities, so that it can be determined whether any invasion of privacy resulting from disclosure would be "clearly unwarranted."

Additional Resources:

PsychInfo
http://www.silverplatter.com/catalog/psyi.htm

Psychcrawler
http://www.psychcrawler.com/

Wilson Social Sciences Abstracts Full Text
http://www.silverplatter.com/catalog/wsaf.htm

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
http://www.silverplatter.com/catalog/ibss.htm

ERIC Database Search
http://www.accesseric.org/searchdb/searchdb.html

Medline
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/freemedl.html

Medical Journal Finder
http://mjf.de/

Criminal Justice Abstracts
http://www.silverplatter.com/catalog/cjab.htm

NCJRS Abstracts Database
http://www.ncjrs.org/database.htm

Bureau of Justice Statistics
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/

FedStats
http://www.fedstats.gov/

Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center
http://fjsrc.urban.org/index.shtml

JRSA State Statistical Analysis Centers
http://www.jrsainfo.org/sac/index.html

U.S. Academic Crime Statistics Link Guide
http://www.crime.org/links_academic.html

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/home.html

Agencies Providing Criminal Justice Information
http://www.fsu.edu/~crimdo/info.html

Cybrary
http://talkjustice.com/cybrary.asp

APB News.com
http://www.apbnews.com/

United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Institute
http://www.unicri.it/

World Justice Information Network
http://www.justinfo.net/

Interpol
http://www.interpol.int/

Net Detective 2000
http://www.reversephonedirectory.com/netdet2000/

Lexis-Nexis Public Records Searches
http://www.lexis-nexis.com/business/pubrec/

Due Diligence Data
http://world.std.com/~mmoore/

An Open and Shut Case
http://govtech.net/publications/gt/1999/nov/MagstoryA/magstorya.shtm

Leon Co., FL Clerk of Courts
http://www.clerk.leon.fl.us/

Florida Dept. of Corrections Inmate Population Information Search
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/activeinmates/inmatesearch.asp

Florida Dept. of Corrections Supervised Population Information Search
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/activeoffenders/offendersearch.asp

Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement Sexual Offenders/Predators Search
http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/Sexual_Predators/index.asp

Freedom of Information Act Services
http://www.foiaservices.com/

5. What Kinds of Specialty Search Sites are Available?

Comparison Shopping and Auctions:

Excite Product Finder
http://jango.excite.com/xsh/index.dcg?

Productopia
http://www.productopia.com/

Even Better
http://www.evenbetter.com/

Priceline.com
http://www.priceline.com/

Hotels and Travel on the Net
http://www.hotelstravel.com/homepage.html

Notable Bed and Breakfast Directories
http://www.paii.org/travelers/

EBay
http://www.ebay.com

uBid
http://www.ubid.com/

PayPal
http://www.paypal.com

People & Places:

Idealist: Find Non-profit Organizations, Jobs, and Internships
http://www.idealist.org/

Scholarly Societies
http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/overview.html

Lawyers.com
http://www.lawyers.com/site/

DoctorDirectory.com
http://www.doctordirectory.com/doctors/directory/default.asp

U.S. Directory of Investigative Journalists
http://www.ire.org/membership/usa.html

Experts Registry of Authors, Consultants, and Expert Witnesses
http://www.experts.com/

Expert Central
http://expertcentral.com

Electronic Activist: Federal and State Legislators
http://www.berkshire.net/~ifas/activist/index1.html

At Hand Network Yellow Pages
http://www.athand.com/

People Finder
http://peoplefinder.excite.com/

555-1212
http://www.555-1212.com/

MapBlast
http://www.mapblast.com/

MapQuest
http://www.mapquest.com/

TerraServer
http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/

MapTech
http://www.maptech.com/

Traffic Station
http://www.trafficstation.com/

Scavenger Hunt Practices~ Be A Web Search Master

Please use the tools we mentioned in this week lecture to search the answers of below questions.  This will be a group project. Place in the DROP BOX a document that contains both  your answers and URLs at which you found each answer.  There might be more than one web site that contains materials for some questions.  This is to be a fun assignment, so do not overexert yourself on it.

Example Clue: What "animal" holds up the White House piano?

Answer: The correct answer is "Eagle." Eagles "hold up" the White House Steinway piano. The legs of the piano are carved eagles.

URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/whlife/quiz/

1. If you find child pornography on the Internet to what
federal agencies in the USA should you report it?

2. This multi-agency program was started in 1988. It provides resources to areas 
identified as having the most critical drug-trafficking problems 
that affect the US.

3. This country is part of Golden Triangle in Asia. Between 1985 
and 1995, it grew up to 90% of the world's raw opium.

4. The Bureau was separated from the US Internal Revenue Service 
by a Treasury Department Order, effective 1 July 1972. It
supports and assists Federal, State, local, and international 
law enforcement to prevent crime and violence in USA.

5. This country and her citizens (and property) suffered nearly 25 percent of all
international terrorist attacks in 1996.

6. I am a person who organizes the smuggling operations of people
from China. People usually call me a kind of animal part.

7. This kind of metal was usually used as the primary medium 
of exchange in Hawala's alternative remittance system.

8. If you want to check worldwide developments, such as legislative, 
regulatory and enforcement actions related to money laundering, where 
you can find it on the Internet?


9. Formed by the G-7 Economic Summit in 1989, this organization is 
one of the key organizations that addresses the global problem 
of money laundering.


10. This commission, which was sponsored by the Organization of American 
States (OAS), was held in 1986 to develop strategies toward the elimination of illicit traffic in and abuse of drugs.

11. In order to persuade the U.S. to remove Lebanon and Syria 
from the list of countries producing drugs, Lebanon and Syria
reduced their cultivation of poppy and cannabis in the Bekaa Valley.
However, they still import raw materials for the production of cocaine and heroin as part of the international drug trade. What are the two major drug trafficking routes that pass through these countries?


12. This terrorist group wants to set up an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey.


13. This country was the first to pass anti-money laundering 
legislation in Western Europe.

14. How many women and children were trafficked between OSCE member states in 1997?

15. This country has a high level of prostitution; one of every 4 females aged 11 to 17 is involved, according to NGOs.

16. Which country was the major supplier of marijuana in 1990?


17. In a 1995 report "Economic Crime and the Security of Citizens, 
Society, and the State," what percentage of the Russian gross 
domestic product was controlled by organized crime?


18. In the E.U., around ninety percent of arms exports are from these six 
countries?

19. How much money did Clinton promise he would send to assist Columbia's government in 
eradicating drugs in his visit to Cartagena in August, 2000?

20. I am a Chinese and I want to immigrate to U.S. illegally. Do you 
know how much  I would typically have to pay ?

21. Which year did Columbia's government legislate its first anti-money laundering 
law?

22. There was a notorious money laundering case that the news covered in 1999-2000. 
Which American bank was involved in it?

23. According to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, how much 
drug trafficking money moved through the U.S. financial system, in a 1998 estimate?

24. In March 1995, we released a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway and 
more than 5,000 were injured. Do you know our name?

25. Yahoo.com was founded in what year? What is its current stock market value? What was its highest ever stock per share value?