I start most searches with Yahoo or Lycos. Yahoo links to other search engines.
(But if you want, go to tips for Archie, Veronica, WAIS.)
The first screens of most search sites allow you to do only a SIMPLE SEARCH: you type a single word, then press Enter or Submit -- and you get the links to all materials which contain the word in the title or within the text; not only as you typed it but also as a substring. E.g., 'man' will also find 'manner' and 'woman' -- unless you add a space to the word, e.g., you enter 'man '; but that does not work at every search site.
Therefore, unless you are looking for something unusual which would not result in thousands of results, it is better to do a COMPLEX OR BOOLEAN (and/or) SEARCH: click on options or advanced search: enter two or more words, e.g., x, y and z, and you ask that all results contain x PLUS y PLUS z. The search site may also permit you to indicate that you want your words to be whole words rather than substrings.
Case does not matter: you may enter 'italy' or 'Italy'.
You get better results if you enter the more SPECIFIC word to be searched for BEFORE the more GENERAL one though often, that is hard to determine. For example, to search for an Italian-English dictionary, I would enter 'dictionary italian english' on the assumption that the word dictionary is mentioned on the Web less frequently than the other two words, and that the word italian is mentioned less frequently than the word english.
Click on Options, enter several search words, select either whole word or substring, select where to search: either All of Yahoo or a subgroup.
If the search result is 'nothing found' which happens frequently, don't give up. You have two options:
1. Go Back (left arrow), select something as close to what you want from the Index, and search from this.
OR
2. Go to one of the other search engines at the bottom of the screen. They know what you entered earlier and search for it.
Archie searches the subject index for the keyword, and for filenames containing the keyword. You get a list. Note down promising sites, then use fpt to download the files, to see if they are what you want. Or get the sites via e-mail: e.g., To: archie@archie.rutgers.edu. Subject: find environment (as an example).Or telnet://archie.ans.net OR telnet://archie.internic.net OR telnet://archie.rutgers.edu OR telnet://archie.sure.net .
Connect to the The CUNY Gopher, select Other Gophers, then Search menu titles using Veronica, or Search directories using Veronica, depending.
Or U.of Minnesota gopher, or NYSERNET, select Search gopherspace via Nysernet.Examples:
To get a list of sites for uuencode/decode: type encode or type encode windows.
To get a list of online dictionaries for English-and for English & another language, type the two words, with a space between them: dictionary english
Next, type dictionary englisch or dictionary anglais (etc.) for other combinations. Be inventive.
You get 200 listings maximum by default. To get all listings, type: dictionary english -m.
To get, e.g., a list of online German-English dictionaries,
type: german dictionary -m OR dictionary deutsch -m OR dictionary englisch -m.
When done, press leftarrow.
Hard to use, and it doesn't really do anything you can't do with Gopher or WWW.
Gophering to WAIS: see under Other Gopher and Information Services on a good menu, then select WAIS based information.
Telneting to a Public WAIS Server: telnet://wais.com (login wais), telnet://sunsite.unc.edu (login swais), telnet://info.funet.fi (login wais).
You need to do two searches, first a more general one, then the specific one, e.g. cookbooks and pie.
First search the directory-of-servers database. Select it and press Enter. Enter s to search, type a category at the database query prompt. Make a note of the search results, the relevant databases (the numbers will do).
Then search the relevant databases, you may select more than one, using the spacebar. Press Enter to start, then /. Enter a keyword or phrase at the search string prompt. If you get search results, arrow to each to select it, press / to see it.
? for help, Ctrl-c to cancel.
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