|
GC Extra
10/11/2001 - Archive
Image Searching on the Web
Several of the more popular Internet search engines now offer the ability to search
for images on the Web. You always could search for images if you entered an image
name, but what you would get back would be a list of pages containing an image
with that name. The feature I find intriguing on these search engines is that
now you can search specifically for images and the results returned show the image
as well. This can be very useful if you’re looking for a specific image and you
know what it looks like, or if you’re just looking for an image and don’t want
to spend the time clicking on each link to visit the sites for a glimpse of the
image. Many times in the past when I’ve searched for images the links had dried
up long ago and the search was very frustrating.
I’ve tried three different search engines’ image search with very different results:
Dogpile at www.dogpile.com; Google at www.google.com;
and AltaVista at www.altavista.com. I have
had the most success with Google as far as the quality and quantity of images
returned.
So why would you want to look for images on the Web? I can think of a few reasons.
1. You’re putting together your family history and you want to illustrate an idea
or an event in the story. For instance, if your ancestor was a mariner, you might
want to find drawings of nineteenth-century ships to add color to your narrative.
In this case, you might search using keywords such as “barque”, “tall ship”, “schooner”,
or “sailing ship”. I tried these keywords as searches on the three sites above
and all returned possible hits, except Dogpile came up negative on the term “sailing
ship”. If you find an image that you’re interested in, remember to visit the site
where you found it and ask permission to use the image. Most images on the Internet
are protected by Copyright laws and are not ours for the taking. You may not be
granted permission to use the image and if that’s the case, try a different image.
2. You’ve previously seen an image that you’re interested in and can’t remember
where you saw it. If you can narrow down a name for the image, you might be able
to find it on the Web using one of these search engines. The name is key in these
searches because that’s what the search engine searches. The hits aren’t always
exact. For instance, knowing that I have a picture of myself on one of my Web
pages, I wanted to see if I could find the image with these search engines. The
image is called “liz.jpg”. I entered that term into each search engine’s image
search option and came up with plenty of liz’s, but the only one that had my image
was Google—and I didn’t find it until the forty-first screen! Google seemed to
be more exact in its search. The hits returned for many screens were exactly as
I had typed in the search term. The other two search engines returned hits that
contained “liz” and were JPG images, but many were not just “liz.jpg”.
3. Curiosity causes you to search the Web to see if there’s images of any of your
relatives out there. Since Kerstens is an unusual surname, I tried that name as
a keyword on the three search engines. AltaVista returned no hits. Dogpile and
Google both returned different hits and, interestingly enough, my image discussed
above showed up on the first screen in Google–not because of the image name, but
because it’s contained on a page called “kerstens.htm.” So you might get surprising
results doing a search this way for relatives instead of using the customary search
engines. I didn’t recognize any of the people that were in these images, but if
I were to try a different, more common name, I might have better results with
more hits to look through. I did enter “kelley” (my maiden name) and received
way too many hits to look through.
The next time you have a few minutes to wander the ‘Net, try looking for some
images using these or other search engines that allow you to see the image as
part of the results. You may find just what you’re looking for, or you may be
surprised to see what’s out there.
Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CGRS, CGL, is the managing editor of Genealogical
Computing, editor of the Board for Certification of Genealogists’ newsletter
OnBoard, the creator of Clooz—the electronic filing cabinet for
genealogical records, co-creator of the new family health history program GeneWeaver,
and a frequent contributor to Ancestry. She can be reached via e-mail at
gceditor@ancestry.com.
|
|
 |
|
