Through the usage of all the different search facilities like the normal search engine like Google, or Meta search engine like Metacrawler or subject directories like Yahoo Directories, it allowed me to get more results when researching for the resources that are related to my topic.
Each of these search engines have their pros and cons. From all the lessons that I have taken so far in EIR, I have learnt a lot about the different strengths and weaknesses of using the different search engines.
For example, although Google gives me the most results most of the time, it might have some websites that are totally irrelevant to what I am searching for or maybe the information inside the website is just a personal view and not credible at all.
As for Meta search engines, it collects the top hits from all the other popular search engines, thus, if lets say Google misses out on anything, the meta search engine will be able to pick it up and show it in it's result.
Finally, for Yahoo Directories, there are categories for me to choose from and it also only show me about the results that are most relevant to my research question. This means that I would not really have to go through all the different results given to check whether it is relevant to what I asked for and waste time.
With all these different factors in mind, now I know better on which search engine I should use when researching for my topic question.
Use of site feeds
Site feeds allow me to keep in touch with all the different websites that I like to view, let it be a blog or a news service. It reduces the time needed for me to type in the URL of the website that I will be visiting and if there are updates from the website, I will be updated about it. Although many people feel that the site feeds is a useless tool, I feel that when a person subscribes to multiple RSS feeds, it will be a time-saver for him/her.
Collaboration with other students
To be honest, I have not really start sharing my views and information on the topic's wiki page due to lack of time from the other modules in my course. However, I have seen the work done by the previous students and I feel that I have learnt a lot of the page itself than other website that I have visited. And the best part about the wiki page is that I don't have to worry whether the source is credible! Because there are citations below to show me the websites that the people get their information from if ever I should doubt the things they say there.
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