Information Technology Int 1 D01D 10
Week 4
Searching for information using the internet and
databases
Last week, we looked at the
Internet – what it is, and what it can be used for. This week, we will continue
practising using the internet to find and print out relevant information. We
will also look at how databases can
help us find specific information, such as statistics or journal articles.
Using the internet
Switch on your PC, log in
and open Internet Explorer. Try to do this on your own, but use last week’s
notes or ask the tutor if you get stuck. Remember that you can launch Internet
Explorer either by double clicking on the blue ‘E’ icon on the desktop, or by
clicking on the Start button in the bottom left corner of the screen and
choosing programs > internet explorer.
Go to www.google.co.uk – you should remember from
last week that this is a search engine.
In the box below, write a
few words about what a search engine does (or should do!):
|
A search engine: |
Exercise 1
Use Google to search for
answers to the following questions, and print out the page with the relevant
information on it:
- What are the main symptoms of manic depression?
- What is the address and telephone number for the
headquarters of the trade union UNISON?
- When was Louis Pasteur born, what nationality
was he, and what was he known for?
Using databases
As you can see, the internet
is a huge place, with many millions of different pages. While you can often
find relevant information by using a search engine like Google, or by searching
within one website such as www.bbc.co.uk,
this can often be timeconsuming. You may have to work through a number of
different pages to find what you want, and you have no way of knowing how
accurate the information is.
Databases
are an alternative means of searching for data, and are widely used in business
and in universities. You will have the opportunity later in the unit to create
your own simple database in Microsoft Access.
A database is rather like an
electronic filing cabinet. ‘Files’ – which can be articles, sets of figures,
personal details or pictures – can be filed electronically, or by subject area.
Unlike a real filing cabinet, you can access the information from anywhere, and
you can store as much information as you like!
The problem with storing
information electronically is security
– how do you stop anyone, anywhere in the world, from accessing your
information? While some databases are designed for public use, many are
protected with passwords to limit the number of people who can use them.
NB. While databases can be stored on the internet or
on a CD-ROM (rather like a music CD, but with information rather than music),
we will only be using ‘online’ or internet based databases in this unit. If you
want to try a CD-ROM based database, there are several available in the college
library.
Exercise 1
Athens is
a collection of different databases, mostly designed for use by college and university
students. You can log in through the
Athens page and go into several different databases to which the college has
subscribed.
Go to www.athens.ac.uk and click on ‘my athens’
on the left hand side of the screen.
Enter the following
information:
Username: stwstudent02
Password: learning04
You should see a page like
the one below:
This gives you a list of the
different databases that the college has subscribed to.
Click on KnowEurope and type
in ‘health care’. This brings up hundreds of different ‘files’ relating to
health care.
The arrow on the picture above shows you the key,
which should help you to find what you’re looking for.
Try clicking on some of the
titles. You will find that most of them only give you a summary of the information, rather than the whole article, website
or report. This is rather like keeping a sheet at the front of the filing
cabinet to tell you what files are in it, rather than having to sort through
them each time you want something!
To get the full resource,
click on the icon next to the title (this might be a ‘www’ or a box that looks
like a sheet of paper).
There is probably some
useful information here, but ‘health care’ is a very broad topic.
Go back to the KnowEurope
page using the ‘back’ button at the top of the screen and change ‘health care’
to ‘health care elderly UK’. NB. You
don’t need to put words like ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘the’ in a search engine – just the
key words relating to your search.
Exercise 2
Many libraries are now
putting their old card records of books onto electronic databases and putting
them online, including Glasgow City Council.
Type in www.libcat.glasgow.gov.uk and
choose ‘full catalogue’ from the list across the top of the page.
You can choose to search for
a specific author, a specific book (i.e. by title), or by keyword.
Click on the green ‘keyword
search’ button. You should see the page above, with information on searching by
keywords.
Type in ‘elderly’ and press
the square enter button on your keyboard.
You should see a page like
the one below:
The picture on the left
shows you the type of resource (e.g. video, book for general lending, reference
book). You can see the title of the book, the author, the year it was published
and how many copies Glasgow City Council has.
Scroll down the page until
you get to a record with a blue ‘book’ icon next to it. These are ordinary
library books which anyone can borrow. Click on the red ‘view record’ button
for this book. This now tells you exactly which library or libraries have the
book, and the shelf number.
Task
Find and print record pages
for the following:
Sociology, by Jane Thompson.
Creating a caring community,
by Roy Manley
French (CD-ROM), Collins