 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Super Searchers interview
Order from Amazon.com Please note: This interview was conducted in 2001, and some of the information is out-of-date. How did you get started?In 1983 I bought a Kaypro computer. The operating system came with twenty-five mimeographed pages of unintelligible nerd-speak. In desperation, I joined the Boston Computer Society's Kaypro User Group, which had a terrific online forum. When we ran into trouble, we could crank up our modems, dial in, and get advice. I still remember one frantic message from an unfortunate journalist on deadline: “Help!!! I just ran the spell check program, and it turned my article into an alphabetized list of words.” In the early 1990s I joined CompuServe and started using their resources for article research. For example, I was asked to write an article for Woman's Day about mothers who were secretly disappointed in their child. Normally I'd interview friends or mothers I met at my children's school. But how could I walk up to a woman and ask, “Hey, are you bummed out because your kid is a loser?” I left a tactfully worded message on a CompuServe parenting forum and several members offered to speak with me. During this period I was writing a monthly health news column for Working Mother magazine. Practically all my leads came from CompuServe's Executive News Service, which screens major wire services and press releases for stories containing any key words you specify. These days I use the Internet rather than CompuServe; they've dropped most of their research services and their forums have shrunk. However, Executive News Service is still very valuable for keeping up with news of interest. I often get word on new studies before my expert co-authors spot them in medical journals. Where did you turn for information about lung cancer?The best starting point for online research on lung cancer is a remarkable website called Lung Cancer Online, set up by a patient. Karen Parles – who's a professional research librarian – was diagnosed three years ago at age 38. She provides a terrific collection of links to authoritative information, beautifully organized and clearly annotated. Doctors use it too. For background information, I've tapped general medical resources like Medscape, which provides access to Medline's vast store of medical citations and abstracts, and the Merck Manual Home Edition, whose full text is online. I've also relied on cancer-specific sources, such as:
Can you really rely on medical information from patients? That seems risky.Good patient sites carefully avoid giving specific medical advice. They link to reliable resources; they urge readers to talk with their doctor. Patients are often the best source for nitty-gritty practical suggestions. If I want tips on coping with hair loss during chemotherapy, I'm not going to find them in the New England Journal of Medicine. Much of what's available online comes from the same trustworthy sources I'd use at the Harvard Medical School Library. Of course there's also a lot of crap out there. You have to consider the source and use common sense. But that's true of medical information in any medium. I'm annoyed by dire warnings – usually from people haven't a clue about all the great stuff online – implying that the Internet is uniquely unreliable. Apparently these folks have never watched an infomercial or read the claims on supplement labels in a health food store. When I was researching the lung cancer book, I came across sites with testimonials for various “cures,” such as an herbal brew whose recipe was given to a Canadian nurse by an ancient Indian medicine man. In the book, we suggest that readers talk to their doctor about claims like this or check them out on Quack Watch, a health-related anti-scam site. What's your favorite search engine - the one you go to instinctively?I don't go to one search engine instinctively; I go to the one that seems best suited to the particular search I'm doing. This is something I've learned – and that I'm still learning – by lots of practice. The search engine I use most is Google. I have a Google toolbar (available free from their website) installed in my browser, so I'm always ready to run a Google search. Google is best for finding the leading sites on a particular topic. The pages they list first are the ones that other sites link to most often. In effect, all the people who create websites are “voting” on Google's rankings. Another advantage of Google is that it caches (stores) Web pages. This lets me see expired pages, which normally aren't available. But Google isn't best for everything. For example, when I needed to find a hotel in Lenox, Massachusetts, I used Yahoo, because Yahoo indexes pages by topic, so it gave me a tidy list of links to hotels in Lenox. If I were trying to find an article about Al Gore that was written after the election, I'd use Hot Bot, which lets me specify opt for date limits like “in the last 6 months” – otherwise I'd be swamped with irrelevant pre-election hits. Northern Light and Vivisimo subdivide hits by subtopics. That's very useful for search terms that have multiple meanings. For example, one of the patients I interviewed for the lung cancer book told me about a play called Wit, and I wanted to learn more about it. I used Northern Light for that search, because I figured it would be easier to focus on relevant hits. Sure enough, the search results included a “Theater and performing arts” category. When I clicked on that, I found the play immediately. If I strike out with Google, I try one of the meta-search engines, like Dog Pile, Fastsearch, or Ask Jeeves. These give results from multiple search engines, so they often return too many irrelevant hits. But they're perfect when I want broad coverage. A couple of years ago I wanted to send a funny cheering-up gift to a colleague who'd been through a bad experience. I had seen a T-shirt decorated with pictures of bird droppings, which seemed exactly right. So I surfed over to Ask Jeeves, which lets you type in your question, and wrote: “Where can I buy a bird shit T-shirt?” In less than a minute I'd found the website of a nature store on Cape Cod that carried the shirt. No search engine covers everything that's online. With obscure topics, a specialized search engine might be best. There's an extraordinary list of specialty search engines at this site. A less complete but also less overwhelming option is Search IQ. When I see these lists, I realize how much I still don't know. But I try to keep up with new developments by occasionally checking the Search Engine Watch website. Mostly, though, I've learned by experimenting and paying attention to what works best. Do you use online reference sources like a dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, and quotations finder?Yes – but only occasionally. I have Microsoft Bookshelf on CD-ROM, whose dictionary and thesaurus I consult often. For the lung cancer book, I sometimes used the online version of Encarta or the Encyclopedia Britannica for basic scientific background. I find online reference sources particularly handy when I need a tidbit from a reference work I'd never buy, such as a dictionary of symbols or a dictionary of Australian slang. I've learned about available reference materials from these two lists:
Speaking of reference works, I can't resist mentioning the amazing Vomit Dictionary, with hundreds of entries (e.g. “talking to Ralph on the big white telephone”). Now that telephone directory assistance is so expensive – and unreliable – I always check phone numbers online. Online directories also provide addresses and more flexibility about searching. For example, if I have a phone number, I can search a reverse directory for the name and address. The directory I use most is AnyWho. Online discussion groups sometimes develop excellent FAQs – answers to Frequently Asked Questions. I was once asked to put together a proposal about roller coasters. I found everything I needed from the Roller Coaster FAQ. Of course the groups are also a way to find people to interview. Two good discussion group resources are:
How do you find newspaper and magazine articles online? Or do you go to the library for those?I just about never go to the library for an article any more. Usually I can find what I need online. Here's where I look:
How big a role does e-mail play in your career as a writer?Huge! I'm a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, which has very active and supportive online communities. I'm in touch with fellow writers via these forums and by e-mail, so I never feel isolated in my home office. I often send manuscripts to colleagues for comments. Sometimes small groups of us discuss the draft of an article or book chapter via e-mail. When I was working on the early chapters of the lung cancer book, my writer friends told me what was too technical or hard to follow. My expert collaborators couldn't do that, because they know the material too well. Because e-mail speeds and simplifies communication, new possibilities open. Even if I'm on deadline, I can send a manuscript to a writer friend in Jerusalem for comments. When I was researching smoking cessation methods for the lung cancer book, I read a fascinating article by an Australian anthropologist describing a quitting ceremony performed by elders of a Fiji village. I wanted to ask him a question. In the old days, this would have taken so long that I wouldn't have bothered. But with e-mail, I had his answer the next day. E-mail is spontaneous, like conversation – but the words are recorded. I try to remember that when I write. Salon.com published a marvelous article about the "Freudian send" in which the slip of a finger sends your e-mail to exactly the wrong person. I once received such a message. I'd written to a lawyer friend asking if his company could handle a contract matter for me; he passed my message to his boss. By mistake, his boss sent me a copy of his reply, which said that although they didn't have the necessary expertise, they wanted to snare me as a customer. I knew my friend, who's scrupulously honest, would be mortified. So I sent him the Salon article for consolation, with a message: “Tell your boss to reset the defaults on his e-mail software.” Speaking of e-mail precautions: I always check the Urban Legends page of Mining Company before I pass along e-mail virus warnings, petitions and the like. Nearly always, the warnings are hoaxes and the petitions are worthless. But the Mining Company explanations are invariably fascinating. Do you subscribe to any electronic newsletters?I subscribe to lots of them. Some are related to lung cancer or other medical subjects; I also receive e-publications about computers, travel, theater, and consumer affairs. Because all this would clutter up my inbox, I use a free Hotmail account for most of these newsletters. These are the ones I find particularly useful for my writing:
What other writing-oriented websites do you use?That depends on what I need at the moment. The premiere online resource for books is Bookwire, which links to Publishers Weekly and many other industry resources. I've also used the following on occasion:
Are you one of those writers who constantly checks their Amazon.com rankings?I try to keep it under control, but sometimes I can't resist. We had a very strong launch for Strong Women, Strong Bones. During one thrilling weekend, when we were ahead of Harry Potter and John Grisham at Amazon, I checked every five minutes. It was fun while it lasted. Most of the time I rely on a rank monitoring service available from Books and Writers. You give them ISBNs and for a small fee they automatically e-mail updates hourly, daily, or weekly. I track my own books (and also some competing books) daily. And in case you're curious about how the rankings work, the Murder Must Advertise site has information about that. I see you have a website – do you think it's important for writers to have an online presence?Definitely! At a minimum, it's like having a business card with a portfolio of writing samples attached. But there's potential for a lot more. When Miriam Nelson and I published our first book, Strong Women Stay Young, we put up a Strong Women website and started a free monthly e-newsletter to promote it. Our URL was on the book jacket, and we heard from thousands of readers. We loved the “strength training changed my life” letters; reader questions helped guide our revision of Strong Women Stay Young in 2000. One of the women featured in our second book – a nurse who weighed over 300 pounds – came to us via the website. We joined Amazon's associates program and put links on our site so visitors could easily buy our books – plus, we earned commissions on any sales. A reader newsletter is a lot of work, but it's a great way to publicize books. We used Mail-list.com, which costs $10/month; their service is excellent and they don't insert ads the way free mailing list services do (for example, Yahoo Groups). By the time our second Strong Women book came out, we had a mailing list of more than 5000 readers; the list was over 10,000 for our third book. This gave us big initial sales boosts. I'm no longer involved with the site or the newsletter, but Miriam continues to use them very effectively. How did you go about designing your personal website?I designed and implemented the first version of my web site myself. It was like an arts-and-crafts project: Instead of sitting in a rocking chair and knitting an afghan, I sat at my computer and fiddled with HTML tags. Before I started, I browsed through other author sites to get ideas. The American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Authors Guild have lists of links to members' sites. There are many design tutorials online. My favorite is Web Pages That Suck, which teaches good Web design by showing examples of bad Web design. I used one of the Web page templates in Microsoft Word, which I tweaked with an HTML editing program called Arachnophilia. Arachnophilia is “careware.” As the author explains: “Stop whining for an hour, a day, a week, your choice, and you will have earned your copy of Arachnophilia.” What a deal! Eventually, I decided I’d like to have a more professional look. The current version was designed by Laurel Hickey; I use Arachnophilia to edit and update it. What's your hardware setup? Do you have high-speed Internet access?My computer is a Dell Pentium II, running Windows 98. Two years ago it was state-of-the-art; now it's an antique. I haven't upgraded because the reports I've seen on Windows 2000 and associated software aren't great, and I'm satisfied with my system. I installed high-speed Internet access (DSL) a year and a half ago. I found good advice about DSL on DSL Reports. My service isn't perfect; there are outages every few weeks and sometimes it slows down. But when it's working properly, I love the speed and the convenience of being connected all the time. One recently acquired accessory that I find very helpful is a Microsoft Internet keyboard. It has 19 special buttons across the top that let me navigate online even more easily. For example, I can hit a button to refresh the screen. Another button, and a handy calculator pops up. What Internet software do you use?For browsing I use Microsoft Internet Explorer. I have a huge list of “Favorites” that's subdivided into categories so I can easily find useful Web pages again. All browsers let you select a start page – the page that appears first when you open the program. I use the Yahoo start page, which can be customized in various ways. My personal version gives me health news headlines from Reuters and the AP, as well as general news headlines. If I click on a headline I get not only the whole wire service story, but – in many cases – links to related stories elsewhere. My start page also has a calendar, search boxes for Yahoo and for two online telephone directories, links to the local weather report, and links to the package tracking pages of FedEx and Airborne. Yahoo makes it very easy to select components and arrange them on the screen. For example, by clicking on simple menu options, I put the health news at the top of my page and the package tracking at the very bottom, since I seldom use it. Another program I rely on is Infoselect, a powerful and flexible information manager that lets me save Web pages or other documents and organize them by topics in an outline. When I was researching the lung cancer book, I stashed useful materials in Infoselect, categorizing them by book chapters. The program makes it very easy to move items from one part of the outline to another; when I tinkered with the outline, everything remained in the right subcategory. One of the best features is a super-fast search tool for finding words in saved material. I've begun filing all kinds of easy-to-forget information in Infoselect, such as instructions for dubbing a tape – I do this about once a year and can never remember how. Unfortunately, the documentation for Infoselect leaves a lot to be desired. I haven't had time to wade through it, so I'm not using the program as well as I could. Even so, I find it very valuable. I wish I was the kind of person who's scrupulous about backing up, but I'm not. Because I keep so much information on my computer, backups are essential. So I subscribe to a service called Connected, which automatically backs up most of my hard drive daily in the middle of the night, whether I remember or not. I learned about Connected from Walt Mossberg's personal technology column in the Wall Street Journal; the archives are available free online. I love his credo: “You're not a 'dummy,' no matter what those computer books claim. The real dummies are the people who, though technically expert, couldn't design hardware and software that's usable by normal consumers if their lives depended upon it.” You mentioned that you use the Internet for shopping. Can you give some examples?Online shopping provides the convenience of catalog shopping, but without all the clutter. Plus, I can compare prices and get terrific deals. An outstanding source of consumer information is Consumer World – some of my best bargains have come via advice and links found there. For example, Consumer World alerted me to a source for the cheapest magazine subscriptions I've ever seen – many for just $5.95 per year. It also told me about Amazing Bargains.com, a site that tells you the discount codes for zillions of promotions from online stores. I always check there before I buy to see if the store has a special. Sometimes I can get free shipping; if I'm lucky, I'll find a 20 percent-off deal. Online resources are unbeatable if you're looking for out-of-print or used books. My favorite sources:
This isn't exactly shopping, but I use several inexpensive – sometimes free – Internet-based office services:
Speaking of travel – do you use the Internet for that too?The Internet is great for travel information – and travel bargains. Even if I'm planning to buy a guide book or use a travel agent (which I find better for European trips), I do preliminary research online. For example, when my husband and I visited our younger son, who was living in Paris, we wanted to stay in his neighborhood. I found a lovely inexpensive place on a website that lists Paris hotels by Metro stop. I thought it would be fun to take a cooking class in Paris. A little Internet exploration turned up the Cordon Bleu site; I made reservations by e-mail to attend a demonstration. That's where I learned the secret of French pastry: vast amounts of butter. Here are the sites I use most often for travel:
What do you suggest for writers who are just getting started with online research?Just plunge in. Look around and keep trying new things. Don't expect to become an online research expert in a day – remember how many years it took to develop library research skills. Begin by browsing the indexes at Yahoo. Or enter a search term – whatever you happen to be working on – at Google. Once you're familiar with those, you can branch out to other search engines. If you'd rather take a lesson, go to the terrific tutorial put together by the librarians of the University of California at Berkeley. They walk you through it: when they suggest a site, they provide a link. Another good way to learn what's available is to click through a good list of links for writers. The New York Times offers an excellent collection of links for reporters . The best way to learn is to waste time online. Call it background research. You'll find websites on almost any subject you can imagine and plenty – trust me – that you'd never think of. For example, I was once discussing urban legends with my kids, and one of them told me, a little hesitantly, that he'd heard what he thought was an urban legend. Suffice it to say that this legend involved Richard Gere, gerbils, and a hospital emergency room visit. Curious, I went online and typed “Gere” and “gerbils” into a search engine. Up popped hundreds of hits. One of them was the astonishing Rectal Foreign Bodies page. Who knew? The more you explore, the more skilled you'll become at finding what you need. Also – and this is essential – you'll gain a better sense of the extraordinary breadth and depth of available resources. If you don't think to look, you'll never discover the treasures that are at your fingertips.
© 2001, Sarah Wernick. This article is not to be reproduced or distributed in any manner or medium without the written permission of the author. Note: This article has not been updated regularly and some information is not current. |
home | biography | resources | contact
books | articles | speaking | collaborations | consulting
© 2004 Sarah Wernick
For permission to reprint or quote any material on this website,
please contact Sarah Wernick