Internet Power Searching: The Advanced Manual.

With the plethora of Internet reference guides, handbooks, and manuals available, including those directed toward “dummies” or “complete idiots,” and others tailored toward physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and others in health-related fields, why consider Phil Bradley's second edition of his “advanced” manual for a hospital or medical library collection? To be sure, the first edition sold relatively well; OCLC indicates that nearly a thousand libraries catalogued it, and, even more probably, purchased it for internal staff use. His credentials are solid. He spent eight years at SilverPlatter, part of his tenure there as director of training. He has published extensively on topics related to the Internet and to the creation and promotion of Websites, and according to his personal site, “its [sic] a sad (but true) fact that [he] always wanted to be a librarian” (http://www.philb.com). He knows how to present his material, which he does in an informal, nonthreatening style in this volume. He anticipates that pages filled to the margins with text might overwhelm the novice, so they are printed with generous sidebars containing intermittent amusing, but often undocumented “facts” (MP3audiobooks.com was bought for $8 million in February 2000, and currently holds the record for the most expensive purchase of a domain name, 91) or helpful hints (Always check to see if a search engine offers help screens—not all do, but they can be very useful and provide valuable tips on search techniques, 45).

Although the author states that the book is not exclusively geared toward information professionals, he refers to Boolean logic vs. free-text searching, truncation, and weighting criteria for ranking search results. This occurs early on in his introduction to search engines, but he fails to provide examples or direct the reader to a subsequent explanation later in the book. For the more experienced reader, the book is certainly well-organized for the “dip in” approach (xii) as well as its primary use as a basic text, one that I might have selected for teaching online searching classes in library school. As in the first edition, there are three parts, although the divisions make little intuitive sense. Why does part two, for example, entitled “Becoming an Expert Searcher” not include the useful “Forty Tips and Hints for Better and Quicker Searching” chapter that instead appears under part three, “The Future?” Rather, part two is a relatively short portion of the book and includes only two chapters, one on intelligent agents and one on Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists, while the bulk of the searching instruction can be found in the expanded part one, “Mining the Internet for Information.”

This illogical broad arrangement aside, the chapters from the previous edition, as well as some new ones, are clearly labeled for those who recognize categories such as natural-language, free-text or meta search engines. Descriptions of representative search engines are provided, along with some excellent examples and screenshots, although some screens have already been revised since the shots were taken. It would be useful if one could determine immediately that a search engine is capable of supporting field searching, especially with the examples the author supplies. This reviewer remains unconvinced that a beginner will be drawn to this chapter. The Northern Lights description does not mention any costs, while the only nod to Google is its inclusion on a list of “other” free search engines. New additions that might attract the more casual user are chapters on finding people or locating resources by media type (including cautionary notes about copyright restrictions) that proved very basic and quite helpful.

As one responsible for managing the electronic journals at our institution, this reviewer was curious to see how Bradley presented full-text resources available via the Internet. It seemed a reasonable expectation that the chapter on virtual libraries and gateways might address journals and books, since there did not appear to be any other part of the book that would do so. This chapter, however, might more aptly have been named “Website Evaluation.” The author rightly assumes that the user should be able to distinguish between authoritative and questionable sites and lists some appropriate guidelines: type of domain, sponsors, currency, awards, design, ownership, and so forth. He mentions that a virtual library may contain full-text materials, but the expected comparisons of free, free-with-print, paid online, or major packages or html vs. PDF or other formats were not to be found. URLs for major “libraries” of free scholarly full-text, such as FreeMedicalJournals, FreeMedicalBooks, Highwire Press, SPARC (or other “open access initiative” sites), BioMed Central, and others did not appear, nor was there any discussion related to proxy server or remote use or the free alerting/tables of contents services numerous publishers provide. Instead, there are nearly three pages devoted to BUBL, a library and information science “virtual library” that, when examined, contained numerous broken links and a journals section whose most recent abstracts from our own MLA publication were actually from 1999 issues of BMLA, whose title change was not reflected. If this book were not for information professionals, then why not use more universal examples such as INFOMINE, CyberStacks, or, with the almost universal interest in health care, HealthWeb as examples of high-quality, filtered gateways? Incredibly, the term “portal” appears nowhere.

The relatively brief part two, “Becoming an Expert Searcher,” begins, oddly enough, with an overview of intelligent agents, and the author focuses on the agent performing the searches, not the human who is seeking to improve his skills. This chapter belongs either in part one or in part three, since he speculates on the future of information providers and the possible impact of intelligent agents on their careers. The only other chapter devoted to newsgroups and mailing lists may be relevant to expert searching and certainly provides practical advice on selecting, searching, signing-on and signing-off of mailing lists. The author notes the value of newsgroups to “information professionals” in one section, so it is clear whom he views as his real audience. Although Google is nearly ignored as a Website search engine earlier in the book, Google Groups, on the other hand, is featured here for its superior qualities as a newsgroup engine (the author mentions that the service was still in beta test at the time of writing in May 2001, although the book was not published in the United States until May 2002).

In part three, “The Future,” Bradley attempts to “merge all the different elements into a coherent whole.” He begins with concrete search examples and leads the reader through the process of defining the question and determining the best approach for finding an answer. Wisely, he advises against automatically turning to the Internet when a local reference book on the shelf might provide the information more efficiently. He then moves on to update or comment on predictions he made in his first edition. He admits he has been disappointed in the acceptance of intelligent agents and “micropayments,” but his views regarding online journals and changes in scholarly publishing were, and still are, on target.

The forty tips and hints for better searching, misplaced in this section, are practical: guessing a URL, time of day to search, and taking advantage of browser features, such as using the Find command, creating and editing bookmarks, using History, etc. The remainder of this section consists of helpful support information: URLs for a glossary, Netiquette guidelines, Internet providers, search engine reviews and comparisons, bookstores, bibliographies, and so on, including his own site at http://www.philb.com, and tips on antivirus software. Appendices offer the HTML code for a search engine home page, a list of country codes, and a compilation, by chapter, of all the URLs he previously listed at the end of each chapter. A glossary might have been more helpful than these ephemera, especially for the novice.

Books about searching the Internet have a very limited audience. They are outdated by the time they are published, as is this one, URLs change, Websites come and go, so even the clearest screenshots or most current Website list may prove to be of little value. This book could be useful for a library science class in which students are already familiar with basic search concepts and techniques and professional terminology. In the average library, especially a medical or hospital library, however, Internet classes tend to be of the one to two hour overview variety, and neither the content nor the format of this work lend themselves to this environment. Most users, especially those who do not enroll in classes or are using the Internet away from the library setting, would be better served by a practical Web-based tutorial or one of the many search engine comparison sites, such as the Search Engine Showdown at searchengineshowdown.com, the Search Engines Quick Guide at http://www.infopeople.org/search/guide.html or The Spider's Apprentice at http://www.monash.com/spidap.html. Those who seek more in-depth information may prefer one of the numerous Internet guides in their specific subject areas, such as Internet Resources for Nurses [1], The Internet for Physicians [2], The Physician's Guide to Internet Explorer [3]. Libraries should be cautioned that Bradley's book was “published simultaneously” in Great Britain with a different title, pagination, and date [4].