Maureen Driedger's List: Search Tools & Indexes

Concise & colorful slideshow tutorial from GCF LearnFree.org that also includes a YouTube video on using Google to search effectively. Especially helpful to mature students but would be useful for anyone wanting to improve their searching capabilities. (Link from the Library webpage under helpful links?)

A kind of "one stop shop" for the various creeds of Christianity born out of the page's editor's frustration with not being able to easily access his own creed online. One thing led to another & he developed this page with links to a variety of creeds and confessions. Constantly under construction, this page can be a good starting point for those students and staff wanting to research or compare & contrast various Christo-centric creeds & confessions. The editor has steered clear of Individual faith statements, those of individual congregations, cults or non-Christian groups. One detractor is the presence of ads on the website, but it still is a useful tool if one is not too bothered by this factor.

About.com's page on picking the right search engine for your particular needs at the moment. Includes hyperlinked examples under each heading which is helpful. Good tool for students-Academic Seminar or Library orientation?

Virtual Religion Index provides hyperlinks to religion-related homepages, major directories, & documents within the pages. More than a list of favorites, but less free-ranging than a search engine it streamlines the process of surfing & sorting automated searches by analyzing & highlighting important information. Useful especially for any Religious Studies students, but may be helpful to a wide variety of Bethany students throughout their studies.

"A selective, annotated guide to a wide variety of electronic resources of interest to those who are involved in the study and practice of religion, including syllabi, electronic texts, electronic journals, web sites, bibliographies, liturgies, reference resources, and software." Useful for faculty members wanting to incorporate the use of electronic resources in particular.

"Wolfram|Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers—not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods...Is Wolfram|Alpha a search engine?
No It's a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links....Who is Wolfram|Alpha for?Everyone! Its goal is to bring expert-level knowledge to everybody."