Research on the Internet for Spanish

Lawrence University Summer Institute

July 8-12, 2002




Internet Resources | Teachers' Choice | Searching: Countries and Codes | Searching: Performing Your Search | Citation and Evaluation



Internet Resources

AP Spanish: Information from AP Central and the College Board You must register (for free) if you want to take advantage of all of the features of this site.

Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature: From the University of Virginia. Includes Catalan and Spanish literatures.

Finding News Information: From the librarians here at Lawrence. Includes links to many newspapers on the Web, and to electronic news source subscriptions.

iLoveLanguages.com: Created and maintainted by Tyler Chambers, this site's purpose is to "list, categorize, and promote Internet resources related to language learning, education, and use." iLoveLanguages also acts as the Education > Languages catalog of the WWW Virtual Library.

Internet Resources for Spanish: More from the librarians here at Lawrence. Includes links to some useful sites on Spanish language, literature, and culture.

Newslink: Connections to more than 3,300 U.S. newspapers and 2,000 non-U.S. papers. Also includes links to magazines, radio, and television sites.

Voice of the Shuttle: Spanish & Portuguese (including Latin American, Mexican). Voice of the Shuttle is one of the major Web directories in the humanities.

YourDictionary.com: a large collection of language dictionaries

Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:

For brief background information on how to use some of the many available Internet search engines, see Selected Search Tools for the WWW. The introduction explains a little bit about how search tools work, and offers some caveats about searching. You might also want to take a look at the page for More Information on Searching and the Summary Chart.

It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources, or this bibliography on Evaluation of Information Sources. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.

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Teachers' Choice: Tools for Course Development

Sites of interest to participants in the 2002 AP Spanish Summer Institute at Lawrence. Items listed in this category are neither selected nor endorsed by Lawrence University or the Seeley G. Mudd Library.

Canter.net: Using the Internet to Enhance Teaching and Learning.

Filamentality

Learn Spanish

RubiStar

TrackStar

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Searching for Current Spanish Language Sites: Countries and Codes

To locate current web sites from Spanish-speaking countries, you will need to know two things:

Spanish is, of course, spoken in Spain. To find out where else in the world Spanish might be spoken, check Ethnologue, a catalog of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries. Ethnologue provides a list from their Language Code Lookup for the entry on Spanish, which includes a listing of countries in which Spanish is spoken.

Now that you have the name of a country, you can look up the country code. The reason you need this code, by the way, is so that when you search the web following the instructions below, you can limit your searching sites from the country in which you are interested. The country code is part of the URL--the Uniform Resource Locator--which is a code assigned to each and every Internet resource.

You can look up more country codes on the following two web sites:

These aren't the only two sites with this information (which can change, and does) but they are two I've found to be helpful.
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Searching for Current Spanish Language Sites: Performing Your Search

Now that you have the country code for the area you are researching, you can search the internet. What you will do is combine search terms with the country codes. Different search engines do this in different ways; these are only two.

Alta Vista Simple Search

When searching in Alta Vista's Simple Search mode (which is the default when you connect to the site) use a plus sign [+] in front of the terms you want to search, with no space between the plus sign and the term. After you have typed in all the terms you want, include the statement +domain:[country code] to find sites for your country.

For example, let's say I'm interested in finding sites on university students from Mexico. I know that the country code for Mexico is mx from consulting the Domain Categories site above. I would type

Of course, not everything you find will be an exact match. You should also keep Spanish spellings, vocabulary, and false cognates in mind when entering search terms.

If you select Alta Vista Advanced Search you will not need to use the plus sign, can use boolean logic, and can limit by language and date. You will still need to include the phrase domain:[country code] to find sites from a specific country.

Google Advanced Search

Google is a very fast and easy to use search tool. When you go to the Google Advanced Search page you will be given a form that allows you several search options. Type in the words or phrases you want to look for, then include the two-letter country code in the Domains search. Then click on the Google Search button on the top of the page. Again, keep Spanish spellings, vocabulary, and false cognates in mind when entering search terms.

Google also has a very nice Language Tools page, which allows you to search for pages in specific languages no matter what the country might be. The Language Tools page also has a basic translator, an option to reset the default language, and Googles in other countries.

Yahoo!

To search Yahoo!, you can use the plus sign as you do for Alta Vista Simple Search, but since Yahoo! searches a smaller database, the plus isn't critical. To limit your search to a specific country, include the phrase u:[country code] with your search terms. The u: [letter u followed by a colon] limits your search results to sites that have the country code you specify in the URL. For example, I would type
in Yahoo! to find sites from Mexico on university students. Keep all the spelling and vocabulary complications in mind, as always.

Versions of Yahoo! for Argentina, Mexico, and Spain are available, as well as a version of U.S. Yahoo! in Spanish with links to more countries. All contain extremely helpful links to many web-based resources including newspapers and current magazines under the link for News and Media. Links for Government and Society and Culture are also interesting. Be sure to check the list of countries included on the Yahoo! Regional: Countries page for links to even more Spanish-speaking countries.

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Citation and Evaluation

Citing Electronic Documents: This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.

Evaluating Internet Resources: Critical points to consider in evaluating information from the Web.


Created: 9-July-2002
Gretchen Revie, Reference Librarian, Lawrence University
gretchen.m.revie@lawrence.edu