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Searching the World Wide Web

Page history last edited by lmurray@... 13 years, 2 months ago

Searching Skills

When researching, keep in mind that ther is not one perfect source for all of your information. This is why you need to know how to search in the online catalog, the databases and the open web.

Defintions:

Search Engines, Directories & Databases

Search engine: an internet tool that provides text-matching searching. It uses spiders, or computers, that go out into the web and collect information. This information is then stored for retrieval. Keep in mind that different search engines give different results, so it is a good idea to use more than one.

Directory: a listing of websites assembled and evaluated by editors.

Database: a large collection of information that is organized for rapid search and retrieval. Information in the database can come from various sources including encyclopedias, books, journals and newspapers.

Setting up Search Strategies: How to get started

1. Before you begin, think about: ”What am I looking for?” and “Which source is the best?”

2. Use Key Words

Create search terms (keywords) that will help the search engine return the most

relevant information available for your research.

Types of Searching

3. Basic Searching

4. Phrase searching: is the single most valuable search tool

“Phrase” searching will search two words that sit next to each other instead of each individual word. It will guarantee more accurate results.

5. Truncation/Wildcard

Used primarily in on-line catalogs. A truncated search will search part of a word when an * is placed at the end

6. Advanced Searching- available in most search engines and databases.

7. Domain searching: Used in Advanced searching to narrow the search. .gov, .edu, .com etc.

8. Boolean searching: Boolean searching lets you tell the search engine what to included and what to leave out. To do this, you use the “and” “or” or “not” phrases.

i.e. Search term: College, University

“and” will return all of your searches that have both College and University. This will narrow the search and give you less results.

“or” will return all of your searches that have either College or University. This will give you more results.

“not” will tell your search engine to eliminate certain words. College“not” University. This will give you results on College without any info on Universities. It will give you less results.

See: Internet Tutorials below for a full discussion of Boolean searching.