Why Search in the Vernacular?
While searching in English or West European languages can be quite productive for finding information on Slavic topics, the ability to search in the vernacular can be invaluable. Do not be intimidated! It's easy and requires nothing more than a decent browser (IE, Netscape) and an internet connection. (Read on for more info).
Internet Search Basics
Because search engines work in different ways, it may be necessary to change your search strategies when using different search engines.
- Primary among these is the way search engines deal with stemming/truncation, wildcards, phrase searching, and imposing limits (to a particular domain [ex, .org, arizona.edu, etc.], file type [image, media, etc.], language, etc.).
- Some search engines, such as Google, do not use Boolean logic, while others use different words or symbols (ex. and or +, not or -, etc.). For a review of Boolean Logic, go to Boolean Logic 101. For an up-to-date comparison of the standard search engines and their features, see Berkeley's excellent site on The Best Search Engines.
- Understanding how to use truncation and wildcards is especially important for the Slavic scholar when doing Internet searches due to the many forms Slavic words may take. Add to this the fact that the various systems of transliteration/transcription (or lack thereof) for languages written in Cyrillic may result in dozens of possible spellings (for example, I found 58 different spellings of Khrushchev, including diacritics on the WWW). For more information on transcription/transliteration, see the Transcription & Transliteration page. For the basics on Boolean logic, truncation, etc. see Boolean Logic 101
Searching in the vernacular is covered below.
Using Engilsh Language Interfaces
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Altavista and Lycos do index millions of non-English webpages, many in Slavic languages. Some of the ways you can focus on Slavic resources are:
- Input your query/ search in the vernacular.
- If your computer isn't enabled to type in the vernacular (with standard Unicode fonts), you should think about visiting the Fonts, Keyboards & Software portion of the website to learn about enabling it. In the mean time, however, there are many ways to input text in the vernacular without additional hardware or software. Paul Gorodyansky's fine site provides a virtual keyboard for Russian.
- Limit your search to pages coded as (or written in) Russian, Czech, Bulgarian, etc.
- Most search engines allow for this from their "advanced search" page. Though many webpage creators do not take the time to properly code the language of their pages, many of search engines also use other means of determining the language of a particular page
Tricks
- Though you may be typing your searches in the vernacular, you will still have to use the correct latin characters to do things like search for a phrase (using quotation marks [""]). This may mean you will need to toggle back and forth between keyboards when entering your search.
- Additionally, because Slavic languages tend to be inflectional (with changing endings depending on the case), it is wise to use truncation symbols and wildcards (often * or ?) liberally. Be forewared that Google does not currently accept stemming/truncation for most languages (though they have begun searching for similar word forms in many languages).
For a short course on why Google is not the enemy of educators, scholars and librarians it is made out to be, check out Good Google/Bad Google.
Using Slavic Language Search Engines
There are a number of good Slavic language search engines. Some of the benefits of these search engines are that 1) they focus on Slavic language pages/content, they most often do allow for stemming/truncation and wildcards and often make it much easier than do English language search engines (check their "Help" pages or "advanced search" pages for more information.
A List of Slavic (& E.E.) Search Engines
Albania |
Bosnia |
Bulgaria |
Croatia |
Czech Republic |
Hungary |
Macedonia |
Poland |
Romania |
Russia |
Slovakia |
Slovenia |
Ukraine |
Yugoslavia |
about this site / professional literacy / library literacy / technical literacy / cultural literacy / site index • site search • contacts