ELECTRONIC HIGHWAYS
LiveTopics from AltaVista

AltaVista (http://www.altavista.digital.com/) is one of the largest and most popular of all Internet search engines. This particular utility allows you to search web sites or Usenet articles on terms or phrases of your choice. You may use the simple or advanced query mode, limit by host name, title, URL, or restrict your search to finding images or specific links.

AltaVista now offers LiveTopics to assist you in refining the results of your initial search. This new tool offers related terms or topics, generated from your initial search for you to select, or exclude, to help you narrow your search. The terms are produced by frequency in which the word appears in the set of documents.

Take for example a search such as "affirmative action." A message appears at the top of your search results, "Overwhelmed by 40,000 documents? Let LiveTopics guide you!" Choosing LiveTopics offers terms such as qualifications, racial, candidates, tenure, hiring, diversity, women, and recruitment. In addition you may choose subcategories such as salary, position, experience, and minorities. You may then choose to include or omit certain terms from your initial search, reducing the number of documents originally found.

LiveTopics is most useful when you receive more than 200 documents in your initial search. Anything smaller usually results in irrelevant related terms. Whether you use a text browser such as lynx, or a graphical browser such as Netscape, LiveTopics is for you! For more information read the "help" section of LiveTopics (http://www.altavista.digital.com/av/lt/help.html).

For assistance connecting to the World Wide Web via UB computer accounts, contact the Computing Center's Help Desk at 645-3542.

­ Lara Bushallow-Wilbur and Loss Pequeño Glazier, University Libraries