Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Inkwell.vue is delighted to welcome our first interview subject, the
charming and talented Reva Basch.  Reva is a WELL veteran, a widely
recognized authority on net-based research, and the author of four books
on the subject, including her new book _Researching Online For Dummies_.

Welcome, Reva!
  

    

Yo Reva!  Reva, how do Lee's Cheesesteaks in Philadelphia figure into your
oeuvre?
  

    
And what about aubergines?
  

    
Yo Plum! (Aside to the reader, in that echo-y Don Pardo-like voice: Few
people know that Cynthia Heimel and I grew up in the =same town=. Now, I
ask you, is that a spooky literary coincidence, or what?)

Aubergines, Steve. So glad you asked. No, really. Aubergine Information
Services is the name of my research business. "Aubergine" is French for
"eggplant."  Years ago, I had a very small, very part-time catering
business, which I called Aubergine because eggplants are, like, my totem
vegetable. They're the chicken of the vegetable kingdom.

When I started doing research, I was too lazy to file another DBA, so I used
the same one. I figured that if Apple could name itself after a fruit, I
could name myself after a vegetable. Plus, there's the alphabetical
advantage.

In retrospect, it was an okay decision. People can't spell it, but they do
remember it, especially in a field where everything else is Info-this or
Data-that.
  

    
We recently came into possession of an eggplant that had an appendage.  Too
long to be a nose, not quite penile - maybe like the semi-tumescent trunk of
a purple elephant.  It didn't last long enough for us to give it to you
personally, Reva.  I'm so very sorry.
  

    
Imagine how I feel. I wish you hadn't told me.

It's been quite a year for R-rated tomatoes, too. Can we blame El Nino? Or
Ken Starr?
  

    
So, Reva, tell us a little about your book.
  

    


Omit no detail, however slight.
  

    
Starting me off with an easy one, I see; thanks, guys.

Okay, what I'd really like to do is tell you something about why I wrote
this particular book. I'd gotten to the proposal stage before on a couple of
other books about online research, but what really appealed to me about
doing a Dummies book is that they encourage you to use your own voice. I've
written my share of tech manuals, and I'm not denigrating the skill it takes
to write good documentation, but I didn't want to go there again.

More than anything else, I hope the book gets across three main ideas:

One, there's more to online research than search engines.

Two, there's more to online =information= than what you'll find on the Web
alone (or on what, in the book, I call the "open" Web, to distinguish it
from closed, or gated, sites that require registration and passwords and
sometimes even - horrors - money).

And three, it really pays to learn to think like a researcher -- to ask
yourself what you're really looking for, where it makes sense to start
looking, how to pick up on cues and clues in what you're finding in order to
widen your search, how to refine your approach, how to recognize when you've
got your answer, or as close to your answer as you're going to get.

So, that's a start. I cover not only the Web in all its infinite variety,
but commercial databases like Dow Jones Interactive, Dialog and Lexis-Nexis,
and "people-based" resources like newsgroups and conferencing services like,
my my, this very WELL.
  

    
Do you desribe specific tools that are available to, uh, Dummies like me?
  

    

but search engines can be useful too, no?  Here's the one I hate.  Alta
Vista, which gives you everything you don't need hundred of times.

yours truly,

really beyond a dummy
  

    

>they encourage you to use your own voice

And what a magnificent voice it is! I couldn't help chuckling from
time to time while reading the book (I just got it from Amazon.com,
couldn't order it in the usual bookstores).

Personally, I like the Hotbot Supersearch (hidden behind the button
"MORE SEARCH OPTIONS"). Very handy to filter out unneeded info
and/or media.

In fact, I just used it to help my eldest sister prepare for a
radio documentary about Muscat, the capital of the Sultanate
of Oman. I got her about 100 interesting URL's. Including the
homepages of Dutch expats in Muscat she can interview in Dutch.
  

    

Reva, in <3> you mentioned that you had a small catering business before you
started doing research.

Would you tell us a little about your career path?  Looks like you may have
taken the scenic route.
  

    
(a short digression -- I just wanted to demonstrate to outside readers the
"WELL psued dynamic".  Also, it was too good a psued not to grab!)

I'm off to buy a copy of the book now, because I've been hoping she'd do
something like this for years!
  

    

A good example of pseudishness.
  

    
Okay, the "career path" question first, since this topic does have my name
on it, and then I'll hit #s 9 and 10.

And, btw, it's great to see Libbi, Erik and Sarah here. Hi guys!

I'm experiencing the telnet lag from hell, though (one of the joys of
country life, I guess), so I'm gonna go compose something offline. Back in a
little while.
  

    
        It's a splendid book.  I'm hoping, once the discussion gets rolling
on this topic, that Reva will favor us with any updates to her lists of
searching tools and sites.
  

    
Oz, thanks. If we don't get into that soon, remind me, okay?

David asked about my career path, and it occurred to me that I should say
something about my credentials for writing Researching Online For Dummies.

Career-wise, it actually hasn't been =that= circuitous a path. I studied
English Lit (love of language and a good vocabulary helps when you're doing
research) as an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, and got my
Master's in Library Science at UC Berkeley. I worked as a librarian, mostly
in engineering firms, for several years, and burned out on one job right
around the time Philadelphia - I lived in the Pennsylvania Dutch country at
the time - was undergoing a so-called restaurant renaissance. I'd always had
this fantasy of running a restaurant, and when a place called The Restaurant
School opened in Philly, well, I just had to do it.

That was a great year. It was a one-year, hands-on program where we learned
how to run a dining room and a commercial kitchen, how to plan a menu, work
out costs, deal with suppliers, promote the place - every aspect of running
a small, fine, cook-from-scratch restaurant. We ran a restaurant that was
open to the public, and very popular, in a novelty kind of way. Like "Hey,
we're being served by actual students. Maybe one of them will trip with a
tray of glasses!" It was an incredibly intense experience. I made friends in
the trenches there it really was like what I imagine being in the Army would
be like - buddies for life.

Anyway, among other things, that year taught me that I didn't want to run a
restaurant for a living. But I could do catering, easy. Piece o' cake, I'm
tempted to say. So I did some catering, very low-key, very part-time, after
I moved back to California. And hence the name Aubergine.

Around 1981 I left the library world for good; I took a job with a company
in Berkeley called Information on Demand, that was run by an amazing woman
named Sue Rugge. I started out as a substitute, temporary, researcher,
working for an equally amazing woman named Barbara Bernstein, and I ended
up, 5-1/2 years later, after Barbara had left, as VP and Director of
Research. IOD would tackle basically any research project that came along,
from the outlook for water-pumping windmills to treatments for canine hip
dysplasia. We'd use the library; we'd call people on the phone; we'd use
computer databases like the ones on Dialog. Whatever it took, whatever
combinations of telephone, library and online research, we'd use. Clients
would pay by the hour, plus whatever direct costs we incurred, up to an
agreed-on amount. When I left IOD and started my own research business, that
was the model I used, too.

Oh, yeah -- I spent a couple of years in there, after leaving IOD and before
taking the plunge into my own business full-time, designing user interfaces
for online search software for a company called Mead Data Central that's now
known as Lexis-Nexis. That was a really useful period, more so in retrospect
than it seemed at the time. I learned how to work with software engineers
(insofar as that's possible, heh), and I gained some insight into the supply
side of the online information industry. I'm probably more willing to cut
slack to the online services as a result of that experience -- the same way
I'm more willing to cut slack to restaurant staff, y'know, because I have a
better understanding than the average customer of how complex and
sophisticated the system is, how delicately it's engineered, and all the
things that can possibly go wrong.

Anyway, I started Aubergine Information Services in 1986, and went full-time
with it in 1988 - Hey, it's my tenth annniversary! - right around the same
time I joined The WELL. That's it for my circuitous career path. The last
few years have been pretty much of a continuum. I've actually moved away
from doing research for clients, to the point where I mostly write, consult,
and give presentations about online research and other Net-related subjects.

Whoa; this is getting as long as you-know-who. I'll break it up and be back
in a little while.
  

    
David asked about research tools for dummies like himself (yeah, right), and
Cynthia was bitching (am I allowed to say that here?) about search engines
like Alta Vista that overload you with garbage.

Just to give you a dee-scriptive overview of the book, the early chapters
pretty much map to the main, broad varieties of search tools as I see 'em.
You've got the so-called Web-wide search engines that we all know and loathe
(or not) - Alta Vista, HotBot, Infoseek, Excite, and so on. Then you've got
subject catalogs, in which information is arranged hierarchically, from
broad, general topic down through a series of progressively more specific
sub-topics. Search engines and subject catalogs used to be two distinctly
different things; now you'll often find both of them at a single site.

Then you've got specialized search engines, set up to search specific kinds
of information, like health and medical, business, or news and current
events. Check out beaucoup.com for an idea of the range of specialized
search engines that're out there.

What else? Meta-search engines that run your search through several
different search engines at once. Library catalogs online. Virtual reference
collections with electronic dictionaries, almanacs, and atlases. What I call
"guru sites," where someone with an obsessive interest in a subject has put
together a collection of pointers. Gateways to certain kinds of information,
like FedWorld for government publications. Consumer online services like
AOL, and the professional research systems like Dialog, Dow Jones and Lexis-
Nexis, that were around way before the web, and that still offer a lot that
you won't find anyplace else.

Oh yeah - and people. I've got an entire chapter about newsgroups, mailing
lists, and conferencing systems like this one where you can tap into
unpublished knowledge. Ah, the power of human expertise Experts On The WELL,
just that one topic, is a prime example of how you can short-cut your
research dramatically just by connecting with =someone who knows=.

I'll deal with the search engine question in a minute...
  

    
She's baaaack!

Cynthia asked up there about search engines. Yeah, they do have their place.
I guess I come across as harder on search engines than I really am because
people tend to think that's all there is to online research. And there's SO
much more, and search engines are sometimes such a BAD idea, or at least a
bad starting point.

Search engines can't be beat when it comes to looking for that proverbial
needle in a haystack - when you've got a very clear idea of what it is you
want, and you can describe it in clear, unique, unambiguous terms. An
example I use in the Dummies book is scuba diving in Fiji. Right there,
you've got two pretty definite concepts that would probably serve you well
if you threw 'em into a search engine together.

But suppose you're not really sure where you want to go on vacation, but you
think maybe you'd like to go someplace warm where you can get in the water
and do =something= well, you're not gonna get very far with a search engine.
"vacation" and "warm" and "ocean" or whatever are just not going to do it
for you, search-engine-wise. In that case, you'd be much better off going to
a travel site to begin with, or starting with the "travel" category in a
subject catalog like Yahoo! and drilling down, browsing through various
possibilities, til you come to something you like.

As for getting 80 trillion hits every time you use a search engine. First of
all, you don't have to =look= at all 80 trillion hits. Most search engines
default to something called "relevance ranking," which means they put the
items that they "think" are the most useful at the top, or near the top, of
their list of results. If you don't find what you want in the first 50 or
100 hits, you're better off trying a different search engine, or rephrasing
your question.

And that brings up an important point: There are lots of ways to narrow down
a search so you get a more manageable set of results. Phrase searching -
looking for a concept like, say, "computer graphics" as opposed to the word
"computer" (heaven forfend) and the word "graphics" - will help a lot. So
will switching into Boolean mode, which most search engines let you do one
way or another. That lets you specify that you want this word AND that word,
not either/or, that both words =must= appear in any item the search engine
retrieves. It also helps to be as specific as possible. Like, don't search
on "computer games" if what you're really looking for is information on,
say, Riven, or Quake.

Some search sites also let you limit by date, or country, or type of media,
like text or jpegs or executable files, if that's what you happen to be
looking for. And some - Infoseek is one example I can think of, offhand -
let you run a second search on a set of results you've already gotten. Say
you've searched on "dogs" (which you'd never do in real life, right?) and
gotten those 80 trillion hits. Then you can run a second search, on
papillons (hi Plum!), within those mere 80 trillion pages, instead of the
entire Web. It's a way of narrowing down, and also of making sure that what
you're getting has to do with papillons-the-dog-breed, not papillons-the-
French-for-butterfly.

Okay, more questions.
  

    
Tell us about how wonderful it is that you get to live in such a faboo place
and work from home all the time.
  

    
Ooh, the kind of question I LOVE!

Well, it is. I'm on the coast about 2.5 hours north of San Francisco (and
Berkeley, my own geo-spiritual marker), with 4 local ISPs and absolutely no
reason to put on pantyhose, ever again.

I consider myself very lucky to have, somehow, finessed this.
  

    
What kinds of tips do you have for users who would like to search for
information but lack Web browsing capabilities and use a shell account?
  

    
And do you have suggestions for two kinds of problems I've been running
into:
        Getting six jillion responses to a search
        Getting porno pages because they put commonly searched-for words in
them so they pop up during the search
  

    

You really must buy this book, btw.  Besides being a world-class expert in
her field, this woman has a *wicked*, dry sense of humor!
  

    

reva, thank you!  This is almost as good as reading the book.