RefSeek searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.
RefSeek's unique approach offers students comprehensive subject coverage without the information overload of a general search engine—increasing the visibility of academic information and compelling ideas that are often lost in a muddle of sponsored links and commercial results.
There are three ways to access information using RefSeek: web search, document search, and directory of sources/tools. The developers provide Search Tips to help researchers achieve a useful result set.
Web
The default results are a custom Google web search. Researchers can quickly try the same search on Ask.com, Bing, or Yahoo. The search results are presented in a clean and consistent format: webpage title in blue (link), 25 word summary in black, visible url in green. While Wikipedia is often the top result, it is followed by many credible, reliable, and school friendly sites. As with any web search, researchers must evaluate each individual source to ensure it meets their information needs (and teacher requirements).
Documents
Similar to web search, this limits the results to documents. Most documents will preview in the search screen allowing for quick and efficient evaluation. Researchers can switch between web and documents without losing search terms. Teachers will find this useful in locating handouts on specific topics.
Directory
Through the Directory information seekers can locate specific resources and tools. This goes beyond the usual Almanacs, Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, News, and Quotations, making RefSeek an excellent tool for teachers looking to create pathfinders or resource lists for their students. Also included:
Similar to web search, this limits the results to documents. Most documents will preview in the search screen allowing for quick and efficient evaluation. Researchers can switch between web and documents without losing search terms. Teachers will find this useful in locating handouts on specific topics.
Directory
Through the Directory information seekers can locate specific resources and tools. This goes beyond the usual Almanacs, Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, News, and Quotations, making RefSeek an excellent tool for teachers looking to create pathfinders or resource lists for their students. Also included:
- Atlases: Interactive maps and geography sites.
- Answers: The sites your students shouldn't be going to for citable material; the sites you should check your assignments against before sharing with students.
- Bookmarking: Good list of social bookmarking sites, or curated lists of websites tagged by topic.
- Directories: Web page indexes developed by people, not spiders.
- Multimedia: Educational video sites.
- Writing: Style guides and grammar tools.
- Topical resources, such as Health & Medical, Literature, Mathematics, and Visual Arts .
- Links to web based Calculators, Software, Publishing, and Translation tools.
- Search Engines: Short list of popular search engines.
- Teacher Resources: Lesson plan and professional development resources.
