by Billie Peterson, Baylor University

Occasionally I discover a search engine that is focused on a specific content area.  I have found these search engines to be very useful.  There must be others out there.  What are they and where are they?

—Serious About Subject Searching

Dear SASS—

There is a growing number of search engines and directories  that focus on Internet resources in specific subject categories.  Surprisingly enough, such subject-oriented Internet databases are relatively easy to locate.  Some people argue that subject-oriented search engines, especially those that are selective in their content, will become more  common and more valuable because people using the standard Internet search engines will not want to deal with the huge volume of information returned  in a search, when they can use a specialized search engine and find more  precise and relevant information.

Here are a few basic tips will get you started in finding these types of search engines and directories:

• Use Yahoo (http://www.yahoo. com).
• Select a particular subject category; perform a search on  the phrase “search engine” and limit that search to the  selected category.
• Click on the link, “Web Directories” when it is a subcategory option on appropriate Yahoo subcategory web pages.
• Use SearchEngineGuide.Com (http://www.searchengineguide. com), a searchable and subject-organized directory of content-oriented search engines, portals, and directories.
• Use the following search strategy in major search engines, like Alta Vista, HotBot, InfoSeek, Lycos, etc.
• Perform a search that requires search results containing both  the subject content AND search engines, for example, in Alta  Vista, you could do the following search to find medical search engines:  +medici* +”search engine*”
• If possible, experiment with further narrowing the search so that  some or all of the words used as search terms are in the title of  the document.  Using the above example in Alta Vista, alternative  searches might be narrowed to:


+title:medici* +title:”search engine*” or +title:medici* +”search engine*” or +medici* +title:”search engine*”

Listed below are some subject-oriented search engines and directories that may be of interest.  Most of these are subject-specific search engines that will lead to subject-specific web pages within that content area.  Some are strictly directories that can be browsed only and others are specialized  databases that provide useful information but don’t lead to additional web pages.

Art
Artcyclopedia
  http://artcyclopedia.com/
World Wide Arts Resource
  http://wwar.com/
PhotoLinks
  http://www.photolinks.net

Business
Dow Jones Business Directory
  http://businessdirectory.dowjones.com/
GRAIL Search
 http://www.grailsearch.com/
justquotes.com
  http://www.justquotes.com/
Pronet Business Search Engine
  http://pronet.ca/

Education
Education Web Search
  http://Alpha.TKM.MB.CA/education/ Education World
  http://www.education-world.com/ Lesson PlanZ
  http://www.LessonPlanz.com/

Humanities
Hippias (Philosophy)
  http://hippias.evansville.edu/
The Internet Movie Database
  http://www.imdb.com/

Law and Government
All Law
  http://www.AllLaw.com/default.asp
FLITE Federal Legal Information Through Electronics
   http://www.fedworld.gov/supcourt/index.htm
Law Enforcement Links Directory
  http://www.leolinks.com/ munisource
  http://www.munisource.org/ usgovsearch
  (free edition)
  http://usgovsearch.northernlight.com/publibaccess/

Literature
Fiction Search
  http://www.fictionsearch.com/
The Internet Classics Archive
  http://classics.mit.edu/
The Plays of William Shakespeare
  http://www.theplays.org/index_main.html
Project Gutenberg Search Engine
  http://promo.net/pg/query.html
Search Shakespeare
  http://tech-two.mit.edu/Shakespeare/search.html

Medicine
Hardin Meta Directory
  http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/
HealthAtoZ
  http://www.healthatoz.com/final.asp MedExplorer
  http://www.medexplorer.com/
Medical World Search
  http://www.mwsearch.com/
Pharmaceutical Search Engine
  http://www.farma.com/index_uk.htm

Music
MIDI Search Engine
  http://www.musicrobot.com/ MusicSearch.Com
  http://musicsearch.com/
Wav Search Engine
  http://www.musicrobot.com/windex.html

Recreation
Crafts Search
  http://www.bella-decor.com/search.htm
CitySearch: New York City
  http://www.metrobeat.com/
The Quilt Channel
  http://www.quiltchannel.com/
Search San Diego
  http://searchsd.com/index.html
SkiCentral Search
  http://skicentral.com/

Reference
AddALL Book Search and Price Comparison
  http://www.addall.com/
Airport Search Engine
  http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~un9v/atm/body.html
Embassies and Consulates Search
  http://www02.tiglion.net/scripts/travdb/embassy/
  front_emb.idc#search
World Flag Database
  http://www.flags.net/

Religion
All Things Spiritual Database
  http://www.allspiritual.com/
ARTFL Project: Multilingual Bibles
  http://estragon.uchicago.edu/Bibles/
Bible Gateway
  http://bible.gospelcom.net/
Jewish Community
  http://www.jewish.com/search/

Sciences
Aviation Search Engine
  http://search.totavia.com/
BioChemNet
  http://schmidel.com/bionet.cfm/
Discovery Channel
http://www.discovery.com/search/search.html
Environmental Search Engine
  http://www.enviroseek.net/
SciSeek
  http://www.sciseek.com

Social Sciences
FeMiNa
  http://femina.cybergrrl.com
NativeSearch.com (Native Americans)
  http://nativesearch.com/
Political Information Search Engine
  http://www.politicalinformation.com/
Social Work Search
  http://www.socialworksearch.com/
WWWomen.com
  http://www.wwwomen.com/

Snail Mail:  Tech Talk
  Billie Peterson
  Moody Memorial Library
  P. O. Box 97143
  Waco, TX  76798-7143
Email:   Billie_Peterson@baylor.edu

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