Alta Vista - a Web index, which also contains full-text access to over 13,000 news groups, at URL: http://www.altavista.com.

search tips: link related words into phrase by enclosing in quotes, e.g. "higher education"; search in lower-case to match capitalized words as well; search in capital letters to force an exact match; precee required search terms with a +, prohibited ones with a -, e.g. +noir +film -"pinot noir"; use * as a wildcard to catch variety of word endings, e.g. librar* for library, librarian, libraries, etc.; place important subject words first in string when performing simple searches.

Hotbot - Wired's search engine searches the full-text of over 50 million documents in its database, finds all documents that fit your criteria, sorts them according to their fit vs. your search terms, and returns documents as a list of abstracts and hyperlinks. URL: http://www.hotbot.com.

search tips: allows menu driven boolean searches (select "all the words" or "any of the words" etc.); a "modify" panel is also featured to let you restrict your searches by date, location, and media type (documents containing audio files or images, for example). A full-blown advanced search interface is also included, and you can save your modified settings to create a personalized hotbot tool.

Infoseek - A powerful search engine that can sweep the entire Web or limit searches to various categories, e.g., Usernet newsgroups, Web FAQx, Select Sites, etc. URL: http://www2.infoseek.com

search tips: capitalize proper names, e.g., Babe Ruth; to search for separate names, use commas to separate them, e.g., Babe Ruth, Boston Red Sox; use double quote marks around words that must appear next to each other, e.g., "stupid pet tricks"; use hyphens between words that must appear within one word of each other, e.g., cable-networks; use brackets to find words that appear within 100 words of each other, or that you'd expect to see in the same sentence or paragraph, e.g., {elevator safety}; use + in front of words that must appear in document, - in front of words that must not, e.g., city guide +San Francisco; python -monty.

Lycos - a fast-action Web spider that offers a new subject directory to help focus your search. URL: http://www.lycos.com.

search tips: customize search options and display options to fit your search specifications; change search default option from to to accommodate critical word strings, e.g., "peanut butter", rather than "peanut" or "butter". Lycos does not support Boolean searches, numbers at the beginning of words, or use of the + symbol. Lycos does support use of the _ to exclude words, use of the . at the end of keywords to exclude various word endings, and use of the $ as a wildcard to catch various word endings.

Webcrawler - an easy-to-use engine that supports both "natural language searching" and Boolean search operators. URL: http://www.webcrawler.com.

search tips: customize display of search results by selecting either title or summary display; go to "Links" to find out who's linking to your home page; go to "WebFacts" for latest statistics on Web use; perform advanced searching with these operators: AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, ADJ, quotations and parentheses.