This page provides what are judged to be the best available search engines and indexes for general research. Present state of the art for internet citation is also linked on this page. Additional search tools for general research are found in the Lawyer's Toolbox on Page Eight.  

Note:  For factual research of all kinds you may want to start at Appendix B.

Search Engines

Different experts have different favorites and rating schemes. Current favorites on this website are at the top of Appendix B.  

But STOP.  What follows in this section gets quickly confusing.  Fortunately, a librarian has provided a very simple guide for the use of search engines:  What to do for the particular purpose you have on each occasion.  The guide is designed for teaching children to do research.  It covers the basics.

There are several good search tutorials.  This might be the best of them, and it links to the others.  After you have forgotten all you learned from the tutorials you can always go back to the kids' page for guidance when you want to start a search.  For lawyer-oriented search tips, as well as almost everything else you want to know on the subject, see Genie Tyburski's Virtual Chase.

Current consensus on first prize for search engines amongst our favorite gurus:    Google.  See especially Advanced Search, with some access to the "invisible web", which is to say database content and .pdf files until recently inaccessible by search engines of general application.

Invisibleweb.com "is a directory of over 10,000 databases, archives, and search engines that contain information that traditional search engines have been unable to access."  The claim is that a search here provides more selectively focused targeting than traditional directories such as Yahoo, as well as access to the invisible web.

If you prefer traditional boolean searching, use Alta Vista advanced search.

Here is a compact and more or less complete catalog of search engines, organized by function.  Virtual Search Engines is also a comprehensive directory, including more particularly Virtual Legal Search Engines.  Here is a another directory of search engines. 

Fast Search is in fact fast, and casts a wide net.  Alta Vista Raging Search is very good.

Northern Light provides, in addition to web search, access to its commercial database of (so they say) 2 million articles not on the web.

Power Search for:   All subjects Arts Business & Investing Computing & Internet Contemporary life Education Entertainment Gov't, Law & Politics Health & Medicine Humanities Products & Services Reference Science & Mathematics Social sciences Sports & Recreation Technology Travel

The newest and probably the best of the meta-search engines is Ixquick.

I also like Copernic. It has to be downloaded and takes up about two megs of hard drive space, but has very useful features. For one thing, you have the option of saving your searches so that you can search now, browse later. There is a free version for searching the web and usenet and email addresses. The version you have to buy gives you additional options. Here are some others which require installation on your disk.

Another very good meta-search engine which does not take up space on your hard disk is SurfWax.  It uses, currently, AllTheWeb (that's Fast Search), Alta Vista, Excite, Google, InfoSeek, Lycos, and Yahoo.  That can be expected to change from time to time.

Several of these old-timers are now "portals", or starting points for surfing and searching.  A relative newcomer has them all beat for this function.  This is CEO Express.

Some other meta-searchers:  Dogpile | Starting Point | MetaCrawler | ProFusion 

Preparing to go public, Alta Vista constantly updates and offers new features.  Its clean new Raging Search interface has eliminated a lot of clutter. The advanced search mode processes Boolean queries and can limit searches by date. It accepts natural language queries in its easy search mode, with results now including suggestions from Ask Jeeves, and Open Directory.  LawRunner "offers more than 1,100 advanced query templates found on more than 300 forms to facilitate usage of the most complex query parameters built into the AltaVista™ Software".

To choose among several of the most popular and useful engines and directories and search directly from a single page, see Best Search Tools.

The All-in-One Search Page ". . . is a compilation of various forms-based search tools found on the Internet. They have been combined here to provide a consistent interface and convenient ALL-IN-ONE search point."

Here are a few reviews. And here are some instructions on features of six of the most prominent search engines.  And some tutorials.  See also a "helpful guide" and a "Search Engine Showdown".

Keeping it simple:  Bare Bones 101 is a very good way to learn the basics of web-search.  

Yahoo a hierarchical directory, is sometimes a good place to start a search on an unfamiliar topic. 

For a long time I usually started web searches with InfoSeek, which is now a "portal" called Go Network.  It is still among the top search engines, but I don't start there anymore.  I do still use it.

Here is a compilation of image search engines. One of the best is Alta Vista's.  Another good one is ditto.com.

The Library of Congress has a database listing almost ten million books, as well as films, manuscripts, maps, photographs and other things.

The peculiarities of the various engines are not especially complicated, but in combination they take a considerable amount of time to learn.  I think the best tutorial available for finding things on the internet comes from my alma mater, UC Berkeley. Look at the others, but at least do this one, the mother of all search tutorials.

There is a free, searchable electronic Encyclopedia.com.  Much better is Britannica.com.

For historical research, heritage.com has an astonishing archive of newspapers, containing digital images of what was previously stored on microfilm.  Searchable.  A sample search of the New York Times on "Winfield Scott" finds nine civil war era references on digital images of the Gray Lady herself.

Stumpers-L is a listserv for research librarians who have helped each other out online since 1995.

If all else fails: "Ask a Librarian is a national reference enquiry service for the public provided collaboratively by public libraries throughout the UK. 34 libraries are taking part in this innovative online service which will be reviewed and, possibly, expanded after 6 months. A FAQ page will appear in due course." I tried it. I asked what the damages were in the second Rodney King trial. Two hours later I had the answer, not only at what is probably the definitive website for that subject, but in a confirming cross reference.

American librarians have a similar site.  I tried it.  Asked a question about social security.  Got referred to the Social Security Administration.  (They couldn't answer the question either).  Just to be fair I asked that Rodney King question, and the Americans got that one right, with almost as quick a turn-around as the Brits.

Indexes

Another approach is to start with a general research index. One of the best is in the New York Times online. Designed to be used by their staff, it is shared with subscribers. Subscription is free, for now. The index is called "Navigator".  Another one is a portal especially designed for businessmen, called CEO Express.  Both of these, along with Yahoo, are in my "best of the best" selection of General Indexes in Appendix B.

The Library of Congress has an "explore the internet" page.  Cal State offers Librarians' Index to the Internet.

You still need books. There is a wonderful index of libraries all over the world, called Webcats. For example, U.S. libraries online, listed and linked alphabetically.

UC San Diego enables one to "search or browse our listing of 850 Internet sites of numeric Social Science statistical data, data catalogs, data libraries, social science gateways, addresses and more."

Yahoo has a lot of links to university law libraries.

The University Law Review Project provides some much needed secondary source material on the internet.

The Internet Public Library now features "the IPL Online Texts Collection, newly revised, (with) full searching and browsing by author, title, and Dewey subject on over 3400 items."

Research newspaper archives from Page Eight.

Citation Guides

Cornell's is probably the best online legal citation guide. Here is its 2000-2001 Basic Legal Citation in folio format.  

The Bluebook is not available online.  You can read the introduction and find out how to get a copy on dead trees in four to six weeks (!!), for twelve bucks, from here.

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Universal Citation Guide "complements The Bluebook by effectively bridging the gap between the current print-based citation forms and the technology-based future of legal information".  Like the Bluebook, you have to buy it.

The Modern Language Association (MLA) provides formats for citing various types of sources, available here to cut and paste into your article.  See also Columbia Online Style: MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources, and this from the library of the University of California at Berkeley: Style Sheets for Citing Internet & Electronic Resources:  Humanities (MLA & Chicago), Scientific (APA & CBE), and History (Turabian). 

 See courts.net for a discussion of the public domain citation system. 

A Brief Guide to Citing Government Publications is very useful.

Citation of internet sources is a new and rapidly evolving art.  Here is a site with a lot of useful links on the subject.  "The purpose of this document is to keep track of materials dealing with the emerging standards for electronic references and scholarly citations of Internet Sources in both paper and online publications."