The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for Serious Searchers

Citation

Tedd, L.A. (2005), "The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for Serious Searchers", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 177-178. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330510595805

The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook is the third of a series written by Hock in the last few years: the first, The Extreme Searcher's Guide to Web Search Engines, appeared in 1999 with a second edition of this title in 2001. Hock's pedigree in writing about online searching and the internet is strong, as he has worked as a trainer for Dialog and Knight Ridder, then as Chemistry Librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later as Reference Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently Hock is the Principal of Online Strategies (www.onstrat.com), a US company which runs seminars for using the internet. Hock has trained over 12,000 online researchers during the last 20 years – an impressive achievement.

In his introduction to the book Hock states that “it focuses on what the serious searcher ‘has to know’ but, for flavour, a dash of the ‘nice to know’ is occasionally thrown in”. Settling on a structure for a book such as this is never easy, as the author acknowledges in the “Introduction”. The structure chosen comprises ten chapters with each including some background information, resource guides to major sites, and a selection of other relevant sites deemed by the author to be “the best”.

Chapter one covers the basics and introduces many of the topics to be covered in later chapters. The second chapter looks at general web directories with some detailed descriptions of Yahoo!, Open Directory and LookSmart. Specialised directories are covered in the third chapter and here there is some mention of non‐US directories such as EEVL: the Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, the Social Science Information Gateway from Bristol and WebEc an economics gateway from Helsinki. Chapter four, at 50 pages is a long chapter and deals with the ever‐changing state of search engines. Fairly detailed descriptions are given of major search engines such as AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Google, HotBot, and Teoma. Groups, mailing lists and newsgroups are described in the fifth chapter. A wide range of digital reference sources, including dictionaries, encyclopaedias, quotations, maps, statistics, government agencies, company directories, travel information, although all with a strong US bias, is provided in Chapter six. Searching for images and sound on the Internet is the topic covered in the seventh chapter while the eighth chapter covers searching of digital news resources and the ninth looks at finding products online. The final, tenth chapter, introduces the reader to web publishing in some eight pages. There is a glossary, list of URLs referred to in each chapter and an index. As a supplement to this book the author maintains a web site (www.extremesearcher.com/) which provides updated details of URLs, search engine developments and so on.

Hock states that “if you are among those who find themselves not just using the internet, but teaching it, the book should help you address an extensive range of questions”. In summary I believe that Hock has achieved his aims for this book. However, my main concern for an international readership is that, despite the fact that Hock has trained searchers in 40 countries, there is a very strong American bias – but if that is understood from the start then this book may well include handy hints for searchers and teachers of searchers. Finally given the title of this book, I should point out that I do not believe it will result in a sport of “extreme searching” unlike, as evidenced in the book Extreme Ironing, (given as Christmas present by my daughter to my mother) where this danger sport combines the “thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt” (www.extremeironing.com).