(FORTUNE Magazine) – Looking for stock quotes? Recipes? Tax forms? Sports stats? The latest TV guide? What you hear over and over is "you can find that on the Internet." But how many times have you routed that suggestion to your mental circular file? It's like being told to go to the library if you're a high school kid--the right advice, just not what you feel like doing at the moment. Worse, the Internet is a library in which it's all too easy to get lost. It has no librarians, no Dewey decimal system. In cyberspace we wander the stacks alone.

Fortunately, there are ways to explore the Net and the World Wide Web that are intuitive, systematic, and even relatively thorough (though rarely all three at once). Practice and a little planning make it possible to find better information faster.

The key is to apply two simple concepts, both of which derive from ways we're accustomed to finding information in almost any medium. The first, browsing, involves looking in a general area of interest, then zooming in on whatever happens to catch your attention. Think of reading the newspaper. If you're a basketball fan, you'll pull out the sports section, check the front page for basketball news, then skim the other pages for headlines about Jordan, the Bulls, and their pursuit of the NBA record for wins in a single season. In the process, a story about the dangers of helicopter skiing might catch your eye, or an ad for cut-rate camping gear, or the latest Tank McNamara.

The second approach, hunting, is what we do when we want specific information. Say you're hopelessly nearsighted and decide to check out the latest advances in laser treatments. You might bone up at the local university library, consult an ophthalmologist, phone the National Eye Institute, or ask friends whether they know anyone who has relevant experience--all as a way to turn up the contacts and articles you need.

The Internet lends itself readily to both browsing and hunting; there are ready-made tools for each. Internet directories, which arrange resources hierarchically, usually by subject, are for folks who browse. Internet search engines are for those who hunt. If, like most people, you use Netscape Navigator software to surf the Web, you already have quick access to search engines and directories by clicking the net search and net directory buttons at the top of your screen. Or you can consult an index of directories and search engines maintained by the University of Indiana (http://www.indiana.edu/ ~librcsd/resource/search-list.html#gen).

Because they're organized and maintained by human beings rather than computer programs, directories can be intuitively easy to navigate. Of those that purport to index the entire Internet, Yahoo (http:// www.yahoo.com) is probably the best--it's certainly the most well-known. The Whole Internet Catalog (http://nearnet.gnn.com/gnn/ wic) and Infomine (http://lib-www.ucr.edu/ Main.html) are easier to use but less comprehensive.

THERE ARE SCORES of subject-specific directories as well; often they include sites that the general directories miss. For example, Open Market's Commercial Sites Index (http://www.directory.net) is a good place to find any company that has a Web address. The U.S. Business Advisor (http://www.business.gov/Business.html) provides a searchable directory of business-specific government information.

The cyberspace directory I usually hit first is known as Argus (its full title is the Argus/University of Michigan Subject-Oriented Clearinghouse, some academic's idea of a user-friendly name). Argus is actually a directory of directories--a central repository of guides on mainstream topics ranging from arts and entertainment to social science and social issues. It spans not only the Web but also vast amounts of material in Internet computers that use older formats, such as ftp servers and gopher sites. Argus doesn't cover every imaginable topic, but when it works, it's the fastest way to find interesting sources to explore.

Directories have their shortcomings. All reflect the tradeoff between size and ease of use: the more comprehensive they become, the more cumbersome they are to maintain and navigate. Directory organizers typically rely on the creators of sites to submit descriptions. In the fast-changing realm of the Internet, this means the listings often include out-of-date sites or fall behind in registering new ones.

Search engines are better for finding very specific or hard-to-classify information. All ask you to follow the same basic approach: Type in a couple of keywords that suggest what you're looking for; then the search engine matches those up with its own database. But the results you get can vary widely--the difference reflects each site's strategy for gathering and indexing information.

The two search engines that impress me most are InfoSeek and Alta Vista. It takes time to learn how to use InfoSeek, but it's worth lingering awhile to get a sense of the types of keywords that work best. InfoSeek returns results that are neatly ranked, with the most relevant "hits" near the top of the list. That means that searching on the words "nearsighted," "eyes," and "ophthalmology" is likely to get you within just a couple of mouse clicks of a paper on the latest treatment.

Alta Vista doesn't arrange things for you quite as nicely. But it has the raw computing power to hunt up truly obscure information, wherever it resides on the Net. Louis Monier, principal engineer at Alta Vista, cites the example of someone looking to buy an unusual Australian wine. Given the name, Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon, Alta Vista turns up a British wine seller who offers the stuff for £4.99 a bottle. The same search on InfoSeek turns up something less relevant to the wine buyer; a critique in Bumpkin's Tasting Notes, an amateur's wine journal.

Other search engines with proven track records include Lycos (http:www.lycos.com), which has been around for an Internet eon (18 months) and continues to be relied on by many librarians; Open Text (http:// www.opentext.com), which returns especially useful results from single word searches; and Excite (http:// www.excite.com), purveyor of a "concept search" some users swear by but I find baffling.

So where should you begin your own hunt for Internet info? It depends on the kind of person you are. Browsers will want to start off at an index like Argus or Yahoo, where they can peruse the arranged categories that direct their search. Hunters, generally a more persnickety lot, should zoom in on one of the search engines--InfoSeek and Alta Vista are tops in this class--to find the needle in the cyberhaystack.

Whichever index or search engine you choose, you'll make your visits richer by learning how to formulate a good query. Keep in mind these tips for searching:

Focus your keywords as narrowly as possible. If you're looking for information about the 1996 Mustang convertible, for example, include the word "Ford" rather than the more generic "car."

Use Boolean connectors, which is a fancy way of saying use the words "and" and "or," carefully. You can search on the words "1996" and "Mustang" and "convertible," but what you really want is pages that include all those words together. So try "Mustang and convertible and 1996."

Apply exclusion rules to screen out information you don't want. Most search engines will let you enter something like "Mustang not horse."

Don't bother with the natural language queries that are often given as examples. Searching on "fat and Shakespeare and character" returns better results than "Who's the fat guy in Shakespeare?"

Every site has an online help manual. Read it. No, really--read it. Most have suggestions to make your searches more efficient and reliable.

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Ani Hadjian