The Skill of the Hunt: Effective Research Strategies for Finding Information on the Web This article was adapted from two articles -- The Skill of the Hunt (Nov/Dec 2000) and A Topical Change of Habits (May/Jun 2001) -- published in Law Practice Management. It updates information provided in the original articles. In research, the find -- particularly finding the answer -- is cause for jubilation. But at what cost? Untold hours during which you initiate several false starts or follow a few distracting, albeit interesting, links? Personal defeat as search engines repeatedly yield too many hits with those at the top leading divorce with missing spouse applying for social security number nowhere, or to irrelevant pages? And when you find the answer, can you trust it? Is it complete, authentic, authoritative and up-to-date? Does it help you envision the forest or spotlight just one tree? Successful Web-based research encompasses economy of time and effort. It also takes into account the quality of the answer. The key is to focus on the strategy and skill of the hunt rather than the find. The Web Environment Until the mid-1990s, online researchers dealt mainly with databases. They mastered field-restricted, Boolean and proximity searching. They learned to create a broad set of search results that they could whittle down missing back teeth applying for social security number to a highly relevant working list. No matter the size of the database, its scope had definable boundaries. And while vendors certainly updated, removed and added records, information did not present the moving target that it does today. Unlike traditional law-related online tools such as LexisNexis and Westlaw, the Web is not a database. It is not an orderly means for storing definable data and related information. It better resembles the research environment of another era, before the advent of online information: Researchers began their task with a known source or by using a finding aid like a library card catalog or applying for social security number applying for social security number a
