Directories are databases of web sites selectively compiled by human beings. They are arranged hierarchically to allow browsing of Web sites either by category or subject.

Search Engines search the Web and create a database of the sites found. When you use a search engine, you are not actually searching the Web itself but rather the search engine's index of the sites it has selected. Results will differ according to how frequently the index is updated, how large the index is, how the sites are retrieved and how the search engine searches its own index.

For detailed information on search tools, including special features and comparisons, visit: Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Showdown.

Some of the most frequently used search engines and directories are listed below.  You will want to explore these and some others to find the ones that are most useful to you.

Meta-search Engines can be used to submit your search query simultaneously to a varying number of popular search engines and their databases of web pages. They act as intelligent middle men between the web sites and the search engines and can be a good starting place for some searches. Simple searches work best.  Meta-search engines are not usually good for searches that require a lot of restrictions/parameters that may not be understood by all the search engines queried.

Beaucoup Search Engines
Organizes lots of search engines by category and provides links to their sites with brief annotations.

HONselect offers browsing by MeSH terms or within general MeSH categories: Diseases, Anatomy, Viruses & Drugs, or Psychiatry and Psychology. There is an option to enter a full or partial word to identify and browse the correct MeSH term. MEDLINE results can be selected therapy, diagnosis, etiology, or prognosis and refined by recall or precision. Results are also provided from Web Resources, Medical Images, Medical News, Medical Conferences/Events, and Clinical Trials.

MedHunt provides basic web searching with AND, OR, and adjacency options. Advanced searching provides nested Boolean operations.

Medical World Search will search "major sites", InfoSeek, HotBot, Altavista, Webcrawler, or PubMed.  Boolean operations, thesaurus terms, and narrowed terms can be added after retrieval of initial search results.

PubMed and NLM Gateway provide access to the MEDLINE database at the National Library of Medicine.  Additional databases, links to journal web sites, and document delivery (via Loansome Doc) are also available.

Scirus searches the web and journal sources for scientific information. Among the web resources searched are the Chemistry Preprint Server, CogPrints, the US Patent Office, and NASA. Journal sources include Beilstein abstracts on ChemWeb, BioMed Central, MEDLINE, and ScienceDirect.

University-Wide Databases provides and alphabetical listing of several databases available on the Web.  Some are restricted to registered UMDNJ users.

Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial
This is the gold standard of Internet tutorials. Created and kept up-to-date by the librarians at the University of California at Berkeley, it offers tips and suggestions for effective, efficient searching on the Internet. Detailed instructions, with sample searches, are included for recommended search engines.  Includes Recommended Search Strategy.

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