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Current Issues in Internet News Research
A presentation at the 2002 SLA News Division conference


Listen: to the audio file of Gary's presentation. As you listen, follow along on Gary's prepared list of websites discussed during his presentation.

Part One: Beyond Google
(See also Part Two: Misinformation on the Internet)

Speaker: Gary Price

Reported by Michael Jesse
Webcasting by Carolyn Edds

    For this session we had two top experts on Internet news research who showed us some of the best things about the web -- and some of the worst. We also webcast the audio of this session live to News Division members who were not attending the conference. Our virtual audience submitted questions via NewsLib, which were answered by the speakers llive during the Q&A period at the end of the session.

    The first speaker was Gary Price, who's daily blog, The Virtual Acquisition Shelf and News Desk is one of the great treasures of news research.

    Most people love Google for searching the Internet, and Gary does too. But as wonderful as Google is, it is not always the best search engine to use -- nor should it always be the only one you use. Gary demonstrated his current favorite Google alternatives, AllTheWeb and Teoma, both of which will sometimes retrieve documents not found on Google, and both of which have search functions or categorizations which may be more useful. Teoma also takes a new approach which attempts to consider authority in weighing the value of results. Teoma, Gary says, has the potential of being as good or better than Google if it continues to grow as designed.

    Google searches the content of PDF files but the indexing of a PDF page maxes out after 120k, so if the content you are looking for is on page 100 of a PDF document you may not retrieve the document. Similarly, if an HTLM document is larger than 101 k, Google will stop indexing after that point. This is another reason to try AllTheWeb, which does not have these limits.

    Looking for CRS reports or NPR program content? You might find some of them using a general search engine like Google, but often it is best to look for a site devoted specifically to the particular collection of documents. Not surprisingly, NPR is the best place to look for NPR content. And it turns out there is a U.S. House source which provides a very through and timely listing of CRS reports. Just because Google retrieves some documents from a particular source you can't assume it indexes all of them. If there is a specialized resource, use it.

    To listen to Gary's complete presentation, follow this link to download the audio (you'll need the RealOne player or a similar audio player). To follow along with the audio, open this page to see Gary's prepared outline for this presentation. As usual, he had more to say than time to say it, so after listening to the audio, follow the remaining links on the sites he did not discuss.

Gary Price is probably the most "plugged in" member of the News Division. Formerly with George Washington University, Gary now operates his own consulting service, Gary Price Library & Internet Research Consulting. He has compiled numerous news research websites, but his principal site is The Virtual Acquisition Shelf & News Desk. Gary is a frequent speaker at conferences and offers workshops on news research topics. He is the co-author of "The Invisible Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search Engines Can't See."

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