DISCLAIMER: These posts contain hints, tips and ideas from folks that have had some experiences dealing with this. It is NOT meant to be legal advice here - just related experiences. Please consult with a reputable professional if necessary. Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 12:33:36 -0700 To: equinerescue@MyList.net From: Pat Calloway Subject: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research The class for the week of 7/27 - 8/2 will focus on how to use the 'net and other sources for research. How is this important to us as far as rescue? Well, consider some of the items that are posted to the list that are inaccurate or misleading or where we don't have a source that we know as reliable who has passed the information along - how can these be checked to some extent using resources that are readily available to all using your Internet connection. Let's take a very common example. The Neiman Marcus Cookie recipe that ALWAYS keeps cropping up on the 'net and elsewhere. Is it a true story or not? How many of you know a cousin of a friend of a friend that this happened to? How would you go about checking the veracity of this story? Your assigment is to find out if it's true or not true using the 'net as a resource. One way is through the Urban Legends (a really fun topic, btw) website which is located at: http://www.urbanlegends.com You can use their archive search engine to find the "scoop" on this Urban Legend. Another common chain email that surfaces all the time as fact is the "Good Times Virus" - one good source of information about that is the Computer Virus Myths Home Page: http://kumite.com/myths/home.htm Now, let's say that you have heard a story about abused horses wherever. The person posting it is unknown to you or has gotten the story from a friend. How to check the facts in this case? Well, one way is by doing an archive search of local newspapers that could be reasonably expected to cover the story. The NAA collection of Newspaper Hot Links is an excellent place to start: http://www.naa.org/hotlinks/index.asp Not all newspaper websites will archive all stories, but it is a start. What are some other online or offline sources that you can think of that would be useful in checking the facts in a situation like this? Pat Calloway, Equine Rescue/Creatures Listowner epona@concentric.net (AZ) http://pages.prodigy.com/equinerescue/home.htm http://pages.prodigy.com/equinerescue/creature.htm ============================================================ Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 14:53:34 -0700 From: Doug Wyllie To: equinerescue@MyList.net, Pat Calloway Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research > > What are some other online or offline sources that you can think of that > would be useful in checking the facts in a situation like this? > Pat, I guess an obvious way would be if you know someone that lives close by the site to check it out if possible or call a local humane society for what it is worth. ============================================================ Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 15:23:47 -0700 To: equinerescue@MyList.net From: Pat Calloway Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research At 02:53 PM 7/29/98 -0700, Doug Wyllie wrote: >> >> What are some other online or offline sources that you can think of that >> would be useful in checking the facts in a situation like this? > I guess an obvious way would be if you know someone that lives >close by the site to check it out if possible or call a local humane >society for what it is worth. > Yup - one way to get a listing is via: http://www.555-1212.com/ which will give you business or residential listings (note that if the person or place's number is unlisted you'd have to call directory assistance and if it's unpublished, you can't get it unless it's from them or you're law enforcement). Doing a search for Humane Society under Arizona, I got: Humane Societies Humane Society Of Sedona....................(520) 282-4679 2115 Shelby Dr SEDONA AZ 86336-5481 See Map Humane Society Of Tucson Shelter............(520) 327-6088 3450 N Kelvin Blvd TUCSON AZ 85716-1326 See Map Humane Society-Coconino Humane..............(520) 526-1076 3501 E Butler Av FLAGSTAFF AZ 86004-7869 See Map Humane Society-Verde Valley.................(520) 634-7387 1502 W Mingus Av COTTONWOOD AZ 86326-3849 See Map --- Try this and see what you get for your own state and/or city. Another way of finding out would be to ask folks on this list if they lived in the area and/or knew of any reputable horse folks (or whatever) in the area to ask about the situation. Also the local Animal Control folks may be helpful. -- Here's another good phone/address search engine: http://www.four11.com/ -- ============================================================ Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 20:00:30 -0700 To: equinerescue@MyList.net From: Pat Calloway Subject: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research Often folks will post to this list or others asking about the basics of a disease or condition. There are many online websites that give the technical information on diseases, etc, much better than the laymen on the list can do. One such is: Vet Net - http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vetnet.html Vet Net links to the majority of big vet schools in the US, most of whom have very specialized information. Another is: The Horse Interactive - http://www.thehorse.com/index.html It's a bit more in layman's terms - the Knowledge Bank is particularly useful as it breaks things down into easy to understand terms - I'd give it five stars: The Knowledge Bank - http://www.thehorse.com/knowledge_bank.html You can also use one of the Internet Search engines to find even more information - more on those later. It's good to use mailing lists to ask others about their *experiences* with treatment of various diseases, etc, but for the basics, I really suggest going to an "expert" if your own vet can't explain it to you in terms that you understand. ============================================================ Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 20:16:07 -0700 To: equinerescue@MyList.net From: Pat Calloway Subject: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research/Deja News Okay, you see a post on Usenet about an available horse and pass it on here. We get concerned about it for whatever reason, but then some inconsistancies appear in the story. What are some ways that you/we can check up on the person that posted? One way is by using Deja News. Deja News is a service that archives notes posted to the various newsgroups (rec.equestrian and such) and saves them in a fairly searchable format. Take a look at Deja News at: http://www.dejanews.com/ You can do an advanced search to find posts of interest. Let's say that I want to do a search for all posts pertaining to adoption or rescue for a particular time period. I'd click on Power Search and input the following (vary it as you like for whatever you'd like to find): under search for, put adoption or rescue; for group, input rec.equestrian (you can do others, but you may get some truly *weird* hits!); for dates, put in Jan 01 1998 to aug 0 1 1998. Then click on "find". You should get about 900 hits. Cool, huh? Now do a new search and just look for all the posts by or referencing a particular poster via their email address. (I've munged my address up, so you can't find me - actually I do it to defeat the Evil Spammers.) There ARE ways to defeat Deja News and others from archiving your posts to the Usenet Newsgroups - if you're reading newsgroups and you see one with this before the start of the message, "X-No-Archive: yes" that is supposed to keep it from being archived, HOWEVER, if someone quotes that message in a followup and doesn't use the same code, then the quoted portion will be archived. ============================================================ Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 10:04:29 -0700 To: equinerescue@MyList.net From: Pat Calloway Subject: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research/Search Engines There are a whole bunch of 'em. Which is best? Well, it depends on your personal preferences.... and what you are seeking and how well you know how to use the particular search engine of your choice. Some of 'em are pickier than others, some are too broad.. I personally like Alta Vista: http://altavista.digital.com and Info Seek: http://www.infoseek.com/ What I like in particular about InfoSeek is that you can do a seach on a broad category - say horses - and then you can do a search on the hits within that category - say rescue - and if those don't quite do the trick, you can seach for even more specific hits - say Arabians. Now, you can do this with other search engines by imputing something like "arabian horse rescue" or arabian+horse+rescue into the search area, but this can sometimes take awhile and doesn't always produce hits as you'd like to see 'em. The searches in most cases are based on what are called Meta Tags. To find an example of a meta tag, click on this link: http://pages.prodigy.com/equinerescue/home.htm Once you get that page loaded, in Netscape, click on View (upper left hand corner of your screen) and then click on document source. (In Internet Explorer, do the same thing, then click on source - all browsers are pretty similar this way.) What you'll see is the coding for the webpage. Notice the 4th line from the top that starts with meta name. That's the meta tag to help search engines find hits: As you can see, I've tried to be reflective of what we discuss on the list and what is contained in the Equine Rescue Mailing List Home Page. You may want to check this out on other webpages as well (be warned, I've found a few that use some rather risque terms on pages that have NOTHING whatsoever to do with those terms - it appears that they are just there to get hits). Do any of the rest of you have any particular favorites and any helpful hints for the rest of us on how to use them? ============================================================ Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 10:20:30 -0700 To: equinerescue@MyList.net, Pat Calloway From: Mike Dodge Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research/Search Engines Alta Vista is a good one but Gail turned me on to one that uses all the major search engines at the same time and it's fast and easy. I don't like taking the time to go through each engine. I have used this for over a month and found it exceptional. All you do once the program is downloaded(it's free) is insert the key words and it goes to work. I don't have to wade thru hundred and hundreds of possibilities. Try it. You'll like it. http://www.copernic.com/ Mike Chris And Mike Dodge,Founders H.O.R.S.E. Rescue and Sanctuary,Inc. http://www.geocities.com/rainforest/1080 ICQ #6714413 "if all the beasts were gone, man would die from loneliness, for whatever happens to the beast, happens to the man" ============================================================ Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 14:25:10 -0400 From: Mike & Chris Smith To: equinerescue@MyList.net, Mike Dodge Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research/Search Engines Another one that uses searches several major search engines at once is "Dogpile". http://www.dogpile.com/ While my favorite is also Alta Vista, I use Dogpile pretty regularly too. (How could I resist the name in a household of 9 dogs? ) Chris -- Equine Rescue League, Inc Leesburg, VA http://equinenet.org/erl/ ============================================================ Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 11:38:44 -0700 To: equinerescue@MyList.net From: Pat Calloway Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research At 03:23 PM 7/29/98 -0700, Pat Calloway wrote: > >Yup - one way to get a listing is via: > >http://www.555-1212.com/ > >which will give you business or residential listings Another offshoot of this particular link which isn't really obvious from the way that the particular page is set up is: http://www.555-1212.com/whte_us.htm This page offers a way to look up via phone number or address only. So, if you want to find out a number for a particular address, you can input the address and it should come up with any published listings for it. I'm wondering if this is working anymore since I'm using a friend's listed address for it and coming up with no matches. The phone company does put out a reverse directory book which a public library will normally have available in the reference section. To find email addresses... http://www.four11.com/ will give you LOTS of hits, not necessarily accurate. Switchboard: http://www.switchboard.com/ has a lot of information - you can have yourself listed there if not already listed and you want to be found. This is not necessarily a bad idea - IF you have a business or rescue and want people to be able to hook up with you. There are a number of free mailbox services (juno, excite, hotmail, etc) that you can use in order to direct any email to that account rather than your "everyday" account. ============================================================ Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 11:43:34 -0700 To: equinerescue@MyList.net From: Pat Calloway What other areas are you interested in researching? Let me know - not sure if I am covering all that might be useful to you guys. So far we've looked at how to locate people's phone numbers and addresess, how to use Deja News and the search engines and various useful websites to find medical information. I'm sure I'm missing something, but what? ============================================================ Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 15:29:51 -0400 From: Mike & Chris Smith To: equinerescue@MyList.net, Pat Calloway Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research Another on-line "reverse lookup" is at http://in-115.infospace.com/_1_53674849__info/index_ppl.htm I tested it using ERL's phone number and it did find ERL, but it showed the old Rural Route address prior to the new 911-mandated addresses, (a couple years old now) so a reverse lookup using addresses may not be very dependable. On the other hand, my home phone brought up our current address, so ...?!? Anyway, its come in handy several times to decipher garbled answering machine messages. Chris ============================================================ From: HVIDEO885@aol.com Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 15:36:27 EDT To: equinerescue@MyList.net, epona@concentric.net Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: CLASS: Research Areas? One of the search engines I like to use is "big yellow". I like it for sending out information on our rescue organization, fundraising promos, requests for information, etc. You can list the city and/or state and come up with a listing of whatever for that area. For instance, I did a check on riding stables in PA and came up with a list of all stables across PA (of course they have to be listed to be included). Try it, I am sure you may find it useful. BigYellow: Your Yellow Pages on the Web Sharon M PA ============================================================ From: "Jennifer O'Malley" To: equinerescue@MyList.net Subject: EQ-ResQ: How to get started? Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 07:27:25 PDT Hi, just a quick question for the list....I hear that people are going to auctions and whatnot, but how in the world do you find the things? I looked in the phone book (?), and could find anything like "auctions", or "animal auctions" or anything. I don't really know where to look, and the two tack stores aorund here don't seem to know, since one of them is at the mall (!), and the other, the owners aren't really inclined to chat. I just started looking at rescued horses, and don't really know how to go about doing the whole business, including finding a rescue that I can work with, and whatnot. Sorry, that was *supposed* to be brief. Thanks, Jenn O'Malley ============================================================ From: Nonetfarm@aol.com Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 10:36:59 EDT To: equinerescue@MyList.net, jenniferomalley@hotmail.com Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: How to get started? I see auctions advertised in the Livestock section of our local paper. Also, the big tack/ feed/ clothing store near here has a bulletin board for local advertising. I've found three local monthly auctions, all are about an hour away in three different directions. There is a closer weekly auction, but a horse trader-type at the feed store told me they rarely have horses there. Susan ============================================================ From: BLRYSTROM@aol.com Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 12:45:00 EDT To: equinerescue@MyList.net, jenniferomalley@hotmail.com Subject: Re: EQ-ResQ: How to get started? In a message dated 8/17/98 9:28:35 AM Central Daylight Time, jenniferomalley@hotmail.com writes: << I hear that people are going to auctions and whatnot, but how in the world do you find the things? I looked in the phone book (?), and could find anything like "auctions", or "animal auctions" or anything. >> jennifer, look under livestock auctions in the classifieds. also, call your local agriculture extension office and they might be able to help you. dawn ============================================================ Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 19:40:53 -0400 From: Sue Emanovsky & John B Foster To: equinerescue@MyList.net Subject: EQ-ResQ: how to find auctions Check with your state Agriculture office. They are usually well aware of where they are. Sue http://www.cyberportal.net/buddy ============================================================ Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 15:12:38 -0400 From: cabblcf To: "equinerescue@MyList.net" Subject: EQ-ResQ: Auctions My website has auctions listed. Not all states listed. If you know of auctions not listed, please send the info & I will add it to the list. http://members.tripod.com/~SueE/auctions.htm Chris ============================================================