All-in-one search


A few months ago, I discovered that I once again needed a search engine to find my way through the search-engine folder in my bookmarks. It happens from time to time. As I travel around the Web, I find a new engine, make the mouse clicks necessary to store it and -- more often than not -- promptly forget I ever saw it.

After a little digital housekeeping, I've culled the list down to only a few search engines -- Google, Fast, AltaVista and the like -- plus a few multi-engines pages that I've found particularly useful. I highlighted one of the latter, put together by George Washington University's Gary Price, in a previous column at Suite101.com. (You'll find it at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/765/... ).

Although I'd heartily recommend Price's site to newsies and other Web researchers, today I have another one to offer up -- the All-in-One Search page at http://www.allonesearch.com .

The site, compiled by William Cross, is easy to navigate and offers more than 800 search engines, indexes, directories and databases. You can search directly from the page and hit the "back" button to return to AIO to search again.

Amid the mix are a few shopping-related sites, but the page is primarily devoted to tools that journalists will find useful for work-related searches. The listings include the common and popular Web engines, plus more obscure sites that might prove helpful when you're completely stumped.

The "news, sports and weather" category is worth a look, although it's not the most comprehensive I've seen on the Web. Also worth checking out are "technical reports" and "jobs and career resources," where I found a number of unfamiliar sites.

The motherlode of the site is the "desk reference" category, where you'll find quite a few engines and indexes that aren't well-known. The listings include several biography engines; acronym and abbreviation finders; a "geographic name server;" a couple of multilingual dictionaries; and several quotation finders.

The copyright of the article All-in-one search in Journalism is owned by Daryl Lease. Permission to republish All-in-one search in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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