Gathering A Search Party

In my ever-increasing search for interesting things to blog about, I’ve decided to occasionally discuss how to use the web in your search for answers to apologetics questions.  This particular post will deal with search engines.

Many times people will call the office saying "Where do I find information on [insert obscure subject of your choice]?"  Usually, within five minutes, I have found something online that I can send them.  The trick to doing so is to know how to use search engines effectively.

Most search engines require that you enter key words for it to use in the search.  The more specific the key words, the better.  For example, if the inquirer says "Sister Joan Chittister is speaking at my parish this Sunday.  Do you have any information on whether she is orthodox?" I can go to a search engine, type in "Joan Chittister dissent" and pull up articles that will tell me whether or not the sister in question is orthodox.  (Of course, in this particular case, I already know the answer.  My purpose in running a search in this case would be for links I could send the inquirer documenting Sr. Chittister’s positions on various issues.)

Remember, specific key words are critical.  If you want to information about the Polish Christmas tradition of oplatek and you type "Christmas" into the search engine, you’re going to have to search through a lot of pages to find a recipe for oplatek.  A more fruitful search would use the key words "oplatek recipes."

Where do you find search engines?  The most helpful I’ve found is Google, which has in fact become nearly synonymous with web searching.  Indeed, some unhelpful people will simply tell a novice Internet surfer looking for an obscure bit of trivia to "google it," without explaining what is meant by the term.  If I want to search through a particular site and that site’s own search engine is poor, I use the Google Advanced Search

Google will suffice ninety- to ninety-five percent of the time.  For those looking for alternatives, a couple of old reliables are Ask Jeeves and Yahoo! An interesting development in search engines are those that search multiple search engines simultaneously.  A few of them are YaGoohoo!gle (a meld of Yahoo! and Google, natch), DonkeyDo.com, and Dogpile.  (I’m guessing those last two titles might be an intriguing commentary on what must be expected to be found alongside the gems during random Internet searches.)

Once a search engine has spit out a list of results, then one must pan the gold from the silt.  I do this primarily by looking for web URLs with which I am already familiar and know to be from web sites that are orthodox.  Failing that, I must then scan through a prospective article looking for biases and agendas.  Does the writer clearly state only what the Church teaches and use supporting documentation to allow the Church to speak for itself?  Or is the writer stumping for a cause and conscripting the Church’s documents to serve that agenda?

If a new site proves to be especially helpful in providing reasoned, meticulous explanations of the Church’s teachings, I then bookmark it for future reference and send the link off to my inquirer.  If the site has one helpful article but nothing else to recommend it, I may include a caution to the inquirer that the article is helpful but the host site is problematic.

Happy hunting!

5 thoughts on “Gathering A Search Party”

  1. Another option is Amazon’s search service: http://a9.com/
    It will search the web, and also give you the option of searching through some 100,000 books from Amazon.com

  2. Once a search engine has spit out a list of results, then one must pan the gold from the silt. I do this primarily by looking for web URLs with which I am already familiar and know to be from web sites that are orthodox. Failing that, I must then scan through a prospective article looking for biases and agendas.
    Have you seen http://www.catholicculture.org? It has reviews of hundreds of sites and rates them on their fidelity with red, yellow and green light gradations. I found it very useful.

  3. An unsung search engine that has an invaluable asset is http://www.clusty.com Clusty!
    Clusty groups / clusters the answers it gets by subject so that instead of having to look through all 37,615 hits that it gets, it gives you the following 196 likely subsets that you can start with:
    chittister (196)
    -National Catholic (22)
    -Faith (14)
    -Trinity (11)
    -Stand (9)
    -Scarred by Struggle, Transformed (10)
    -Society (6)
    -Search for New and Used Books (9)
    -Story of Ruth (7)
    -Insights (4)
    -Health (6)
    more | all clusters
    If I had searched for Chittister and dissent, like you suggested, I would have gotten the following likely groups out of 3,605 total:
    Joan Chittister, OSB (37)
    -Catholic Reporter (19)
    -Book (14)
    -Iraq (8)
    -Religion (9)
    -Vatican, Catholic (8)
    -Letter (7)
    -Publication, Catholic Churchs (6)
    -Resource (8)
    -Quotes (5)
    more | all clusters
    If I had searched on Chittister and Orthodox, I would have come up with the following:
    -Books (30)
    -Beliefnet, Mormon (16)
    -Spirituality (16)
    -Faith (15)
    -God (17)
    -National Catholic (11)
    -Blog (9)
    -Prayer (9)
    -Rabbi (9)
    -Sister Joan Chittister, OSB (6)
    If you want to be thorough, make sure you spell her name the above way and also as ChittEster since many documents have it misspelled.

  4. I think you could go one step forward in this.
    Use “quotes”.
    If you want to know about French nationalism and you type in: French Nationalism, then you will get articles that mention “French” or “Nationalism”.
    BUT, If you type in “French Nationalism”, you will get only articles that mention “French Nationalism”.

  5. After the weekend from hell,I thought I’d come here for a little light hearted joviality…and I got it…I typed into google “Jimmy Akin, nut”
    and here are some of the results it spewed out;
    “… (Jimmy Akin) . . . eat as the ancient Romans did! … I particularly liked
    the look of the recipes for Roast Tuna and also the Nut Tart. Interesting. …
    http://www.jimmyakin.org/2005/03/when_in_ancient.html – 23k
    JIMMY AKIN.ORG: Friday Photo Caption
    … Posted by: Jimmy Akin | December 3, 2004 12:06 PM. “Looks like it’s time to
    dye your … Now go get me a big nut. Posted by: | December 3, 2004 03:12 PM …
    http://www.jimmyakin.org/2004/12/friday_photo_ca.html – 24k
    DEFENSOR FIDEI: Jimmy Akin’s Blog
    … “Jimmy Akin,” I replied. “It’sa pleasure to meet you, sir.” … if he really
    was the paranoid conspiracy nut he outwardly appears to be. …
    members.cox.net/jimmyakin/x-meet-jack-chick.htm – 36k –
    who’d a thunk it 😀
    God Bless.

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