Transcript Internet_Searching - Ecole Plamondon School

Internet Searching
Skills
Internet
• No quality control
• Constantly changing
• Use general strategies
Subject Directories
• Organized by subject or topic
• Examples:
www.about.com
www.lii.org
• Yahoo! Is supported by paid
advertising and if no results are found
it will then automatically search in Alta
Vista.
Search Engines
• Search the web for a certain word or
phrase
• Each search engine is slightly different
• Try different ones…
www.dogpile.com
www.hotbot.com
www.metacrawler.com
Google
• Used the most
• Effective
• Dependable
• Identifies paid sponsors’ links
Google
• Allows quotation marks
"working mothers"
• Easy to use tabs news, images....
• Advance searching and spelling fixes
Google
Ability restrict to specific sites & file types
"windows XP" site:microsoft.com
"chemical fires" filetype:ppt
Searching Strategies
• Become familiar with the topic
• Choose search terms
• Select subject directory or search engine
• Use advanced searching techniques
• Limit search by language, date etc…
• Try and guess possible web addresses
Boolean Operators
• AND, OR and NOT
• Should be in upper case
• Use the “( )” to list the order of operations
AND or “+”
Retrieve sites that have both search terms
Does not mean that the terms are together
OR
Retrieve sites that contain one or both words
Used to connect synonyms
NOT or “-”
Retrieve the web sites that may not
contain the word you specified
Advanced Boolean Operators
• "Near" search for words within 10-25 of each other
Example: sheep NEAR/10 dip
• "ADJ" searches for words that are right next to
each other but in any order
Advanced Boolean Operators
• "FAR" searches for words that are more than 25
away from each other
• "BEFORE" works like "AND", except that the
terms must follow the specified order.
Ranking and Relevance
• Most relevant pages are listed first
• Number of times the terms appear
• Location of those words
• How many link to that site?
Evaluating Web Pages
• What does the web address tell you?
• Is it objective?
• Look at the web address carefully
~, %, members
edu, gov, org, com, ca
Evaluating Web Pages
• Look for author information and date. If there is
no information present on the site one can e-mail
the author.
• When was the information last updated.
Undated factual information is no better than
anonymous information.
Evaluating Web Pages
• Look for quality information such as footnotes,
links, altered information and well chosen
resources
• What do others say about this site? One can look
up the author in Google, as well as, search the
web site and find out who owns it.
use alexa.com or link:URL in Google
Evaluating Web Pages
• Does it all add up?
• Why was the web site created?
• Does it make sense or is it a parody?
• Is it the best resource for my project?
• If you are unsure of the web site feel free to ask
your teacher or a librarian.
Why Evaluate?
• Cheap or free to put information on the net
• Need to tell the difference between good
and bad sources of information
• Need to evaluate the information you find
Google Books
• books.google.com
• Material is supplied by publishers, authors and
universities
• Mostly books but some articles are included
• For more information:
print.google.com/googleprint/about.html
Deep Web, a.k.a. “Invisible Web”
• There is an invisible web you cannot see
• Most of the deep web is made up of
• specialized databases
• Use databases and Google Scholar to find
this information
scholar.google.com
Reminders
www.stuartmacphersonlibrary.ca/WEB-LINKS
www.plamondonlibrary.ab.ca/Web-Links
Remember to cite your sources!
Bibliography
http://library.loyno.edu/pubs/research/search_web.HTM#intro
http://www.geekgirls.com/net_search_engines.htm
http://www.geekgirls.com/net_google.htm
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html
http://gateway.lib.ohio-state.edu/tutor/les4/index.html
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/google_print_scholar.pdf
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html
http://gateway.lib.ohio-state.edu/tutor/les4/index.html
http://answers.com