Practical 6 Reflection

Today, we have learnt about using the invisible web to gather more resources for our research topic. We used TP's Digital Library Portal Research Gateway (http://spark.tp.edu.sg), and also learnt about other invisible webs during the lecture.

I personally feel that it is more effective to search the invisible web databases than using search engines, meta-search or even the subject directories. This is because the invisible web databases usually stores data and information to cater the needs of the user of the website (for TP's Digital Library, it is for the students and staff).

I will definitely use the TP's Digital Library for my research in my diploma, because as I had said earlier, the library is specially configured to include information that are useful to us. Thus the resources are more focus in terms of the topic. The resources are also usually unsearchable on the search engines (due to possible technical limitations or deliberate refuse to add to their indices of Web pages).

Of course, that does not mean that I will not use the search engines to do my research anymore. I feel that it is important to balance between the two. One should try to get the best out of the tools available on the Internet. Thus, we can use the search engine to find general resources while using the invisible web to find other "hidden" resources.

From the wiki experience, I feel that it is fun to write on the Wiki and share your knowledge with everyone else. As someone else from the previous batch has a similar research topic as me, he has posted something on the page and that allows me to expand my knowledge of the research topic, as he touched on some things that I may have missed during my research. Thus, it is interesting to write and share our findings with other EIR students or even the visitors of the website.