Sex & the Search Engine

[Jeffrey Beck]

I would like to gently disagree with the following statement by  Alis 
Whitt

||General search engines (such as HotBot, AltaVista) are becoming useless as
||information retrieval tools. I'd like to see a few search engines develop
||a "not" button which would eliminate all porn sites from the results list.
||This isn't a freedom of speech / offensive content issue; I resent the
||enormous waste of my time.  

I find any generalization about search engines frequently incorrect 
simply because search engines can be valueable for one search and 
"useless" for another.  For example, yesterday I found the 800 number 
for an obscure journal listed in a bibliography (HotBot found only 
two hits and the faculty member was thrilled).  I tend to say that 
web search engines are merely another tool to be used with care and 
to be neither worshipped nor vilified.

Happy searching :),
Jeff

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Jeff Beck                            Phone  (765) 361-6346
Reference Librarian                  Fax    (765) 361-6295
PO Box 352  Wabash College           Email  beckj at wabash.edu 
301 W. Wabash Av                     WWW    http://www.wabash.edu
Crawfordsville, IN 47933
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