This assignment is due by the beginning of your discussion section on Wednesday, October 15, but on October 8 you will need to choose a subject during your lab section and on October 10 you will need to show your TA an intermediate stage of your work. Computing tasks always take longer than you think they will because unexpected problems and misunderstandings inevitably come up. Even if you have experience with the tools already, you won't be able to leave this until the day before it's due.

Summary: For this assignment, you will use the Web to gather information about a person (chosen from our list); using this information you will create a Web page that gives a biographical sketch of the person.

Part I

Choosing your subject: First, you must choose your subject--the person about whom you will gather information and create a web page. You can't choose just anyone; you must select a name from the list we will distribute in class.

Your task will be to produce a web page containing a short biographical sketch of this person. Your sketch should contain the basic details of the person's life--e.g., birthdate, birthplace, family, background--together with some description of the person's major accomplishments. This does not have to be lengthy; a single page of text will be plenty, not counting lists or quotations or illustrations.

You may never have heard of the person you pick; that's fine. There is information on the Web for each of them, so this is an opportunity to learn something (and someone) new (which is what research is all about in the first place). In your lab section on Wednesday, October 8, your TA will have a sign-up sheet for selecting your person.

Gathering information: Next, you must gather information about your person. If possible, gather all of your information from the Web. You're not prohibited from using other sources, but using the Web is the point of the assignment.

As you gather your information, keep a search log describing which index and search services you visited, what search queries you used, and what results they produced. (Of course this should be a computer-based document, Word or plain text. You will copy and paste URLs and queries from your web browser into this document to save yourself from unpleasant transcribing.) For each different search (and you should do at least four), your search log should answer these questions:
-- Which search service are you using? (Give its URL.)
-- Which options of the service have you selected? (In Altavista, for example, you may choose simple or advanced search; other services have other choices.)
-- What was your query?
-- How many "hits" did your query generate (i.e., how many matching documents were retrieved)?
-- Does the service attempt to list the best hits first? (There should be a "Help" or "Tips" link that answers this.) How does the service define "best"?
-- How many of the "hits" looked promising enough to check out? Were there any humorously or outrageously inappropriate hits appearing early in the list?
-- What did you find at the sites you checked out? (Give the URL and a few words describing each useful site and the information you found there that you plan to use on your web page.)
-- How might you change your query (or selected options) next time to produce better results?

After you have found enough information, conclude your search log with a paragraph giving your evaluation of which search service was the most helpful and effective.

For each major fact on your web page that isn't common knowledge, you will need to specify where you found it. Your search log will contain this information. Provide those sources as links in the text of your web page; it is your choice whether you interleave your sources in your text or gather them into an annotated source list at the end.

As you do your research, note that your web page must include at least two images, one of which is a picture of the person. You must also include at least four hyperlinks to other information about the person. (For example, a page about Bill Clinton might include links to the White House, a list of Rhodes Scholars, a list of governors of Arkansas, and a page describing impeachment.) Add this list of links to the end of your search log.

Also consider these hints and tips:
-- To copy an image from the Web, just right-click on it and choose "Save Image As".
-- Try to avoid copying text or images that are copyrighted.
-- Choose images that have high contrast, or they won't show up when you print them on the grey-scale printers in the lab.

In lab on Friday, October 10, show your TA your search log, the list of links you will use on your web page, and the image(s) you will use. You will also submit these items through Checkmate.

Part II

Creating your web page: The first step in any kind of writing, for the Web or not, is to decide what you want to say. Write your text, using paper or some word processor, and decide how and where you want to include your images, your sources, and any lists, quotations, or other features. Take the time to produce clear and correct academic prose.

You will turn this text into a web page in two steps, using two different tools: You will start by using a plain text editor (called Notepad) to write HTML manually; you will finish with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, Netscape Composer.

Editing HTML manually: For a web browser like Navigator or Explorer to display a web page, that page must be described in a language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). HTML includes the plain text that appears on the page, along with "tags" or commands that specify how to display the text, where to put images, and where links link to. An appendix to our text gives a reference to some common HTML tags.

To start your page, open Notepad (from the Start menu, choose Programs, then Accessories). Then type in the basic HTML template shown on the next page, along with one test sentence you can remove later:

<HTML>

<!-- This is a comment, readable in the source but ignored by the browser >