Reflection Invisible web

Today, I learnt about the usage of the invisible web, or the databases. By definition, it is a database of high quality authoritative materials maintain by a organisation or agency. Thus, the quality of materials will greatly increase. For the tutorial, I used both TP library research database and the books24x7 database for my research.

However, I could not find relevant results relating directly to my topic e.g. my topic is USAGE of IT in the movie industry, while most of the results I found using the database are about HOW TO use a certain software in the movie industry. Thus, the use of database isn't very effective in locating relevant materials for my topic.

Most of my classmate who used the database have generally agreed that database yield better results for their topics. This lead me to conclude that different research topics or materials require different search facilities to be effectively located. For mine, it seems that Meta Search and Google Search engines are more efficiency in generating relevant results compared to the database.

One advantage of the database is that it is maintained by a organisation or government body, hence its contents are of high-quality and authoritative. materials available on the web may have varying quality. Moreover, the referencing is neatly maintained, so that we do not need to waste time hunting for the details for our bibliography. I believe that using the database is extremely useful as I can easily find a diversity of software or programming guides for my course. The guides are compiled and written by respectable figures and will greatly benefit me.

As for my experience in Wiki, all I can say that it is extremely difficult to start a new page. You will have to set the entire format of the page so that future users can easily edit or add further information. Furthermore, it is difficult to tell whether the information that I have gathered is accurate or authoritative without others to check and edit. Thus, I respect those who started new Wikis that the communities can expand on it for others to enjoy.