Transcript PowerPoint Presentation - Effective Internet Searching

Effective Internet
Searching
Why use the Internet
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Search for a question
Research a topic
Current research
Variety of sources, a click away
• What other non-online
resources?
– Encyclopedia, book, dictionary,
Atlas, World Almanac
Search Engines
• Collects copies of web pages from various host
servers
• Assembled into a data base
• Displayed according to relevancy and rank
• Search engines use a program to search and
retrieve web sites; spiders/crawl the web thru links
• Algorithm to determine rank; company ‘trade secret’
• Google, Ask Jeeves, AOL Search, AltaVista, MSN Search
Internet Guides
• Index or directory of websites
• Classified by subject categories
• Organized by humans and not computer
programs/algorithms
• Yahoo, Librarian’s Internet Index. EBSCO host,
libraries
Four Search Strategies
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Keyword Searching
Boolean
Question
Advanced
Keyword Searching
• Enter terms to search
• Use quotation marks to search as a
phrase and keep the words linked together
• Common words are ignored (that, to,
which, a, the, …)
• + and – can be used to include or exclude
a word
Boolean Searching - AND
president
Washington
• Enter words connect with AND - it will include
sites where both words are found
• Uses: joining different topics
(ie. “global warming” AND California
Boolean Searching - OR
dogs
cats
• Enter words connect with OR - requires at least
one of the terms is found
• Uses: join similar or synonymous topics
(ie. “global warming” OR “greenhouse effect”)
Boolean Searching - NOT
Washington
school
• Enter words connect with NOT – searches for the first
term and excludes sites that have the second term
• Uses: join similar or synonymous topics
(ie. Washington NOT school)
Boolean – (Nesting) and Near
• In a string of searching, terms placed in
parentheses are searched first
• Parentheses must be used to group items
if there is another Boolean operator being
used
• NEAR may be used to require words to be
found within 16 words of each other in the
pages returned
Question Searching
• A question may be entered in the search
field of a search engine.
• Ask Jeeves is a search engine that
encourages the use of question searching
Advanced Searching
• Advanced search features are offered on
many engines by going to an “Advanced
Search” page and making selections
• This is effective in narrowing search
returns to a specific topic or phrase
Google Advanced Search
Getting’ it – Do you?
• What is the difference between a
Search Engine and an Internet
Guide?
• Why do search engines return
different results for the same search
query?
Getting’ it – Do you?
• Which Boolean search term broadens a
search?
• Which Boolean search term narrows a
search?
• What built-in tool in most search engines
is helpful in narrowing a search?