Searching and Evaluating information

1. Searching and Evaluating information How should I search for information in the library? Created 10-12-04 Angela Luke

2. What are we going to do? • Learn some basic terms when computing • Develop some “search strategies” to help YOU find information • Introduce databases and the Internet • Learn some fancy “tricks” to help you navigate the online databases here at school

3. Basic Terms • So What is a Search Engine? • Anybody???? A search engine is like a folder, and inside the folder there are individual pages of information. Search Engines allow YOU to type in key words and “phrases” to locate websites that are related to your interest or search. Examples: • Search Engine Examples

4. Basic Terminology (cont.) • What is a Website? • A website is much like a book. They contain information about people places, and other cool stuff. They are just in electronic format. They have words, images, animations, and information. • The Web consists of millions of "pages" or screens of text and graphics that have built-in links to other pages on the Internet. • A website is similar to a magazine with the first page of the site being the cover. Examples:

5. Yahooligans CBS television McDonalds Samurai Jack NFL Page An example of All the different “pages” (websites) inside of the search engine

6. Basic Terminology (cont.) • What is a database? A large collection of articles, newspapers, and information that is picked by professionals and shared and stored for people to access. • Did you know there are many databases at the Lafayette Homepage? How many? Examples are: • Lafayette School Site Databases

7. Database Information picked by a professional and is reliable Regulated Information Use keyword search to locate information Use first when researching Internet Information comes from anybody!!! Unregulated Information Use search engine to locate information sources Good Idea to use after you have a base of informtation from a reliable source such as a database. Database Vs. Internet

8. When you are searching for information use “keyword searches”. A keyword search is a term used to locate what your looking for. It is used for both the Internet and databases. Lets look at a search we can conduct with both the Internet and a Database. Example: http://www.google.com/ Searching Terms to help you find information

9. How to Narrow Your Search • After typing in your Keyword use AND to help narrow your search!!! • When you use AND the computer will only search sites that have both of your keywords. AND

10. Searching Using AND Tricks Skateboarding

11. What do we get??? Skatingboarding Tricks Skateboarding Tricks Lets Practice: Novel Database Jr. Edition

12. NOT ALL WEBSITES HAVE GOOD INFORMATION!!!!! Imagine that, all the sites you look at might not be reliable!!!!! So how do you know if a website is good or not? Evaluating a Website

13. The 5 W’s of Web Site Evaluation • Who: Who wrote the web page? Can you find their name? What kind of education do they have? • What: Does the author say what their purpose of the site is? Is the site easy to navigate? Is there lots of advertisements, text, color, pictures? • When: When was this site created? Is it updated regularly? Does it have a date on it? • Where: Where does the information come from? Is the website a .com, Is the information one sided or bias? • Why: Why is this information useful? Why is this page better than all the others? Does this page correlate with the databases or print sources information on the subject?

14. Some Considerations • Be sure you spell the words correctly • Do you know how to navigate the search engine your looking at? • Try multiple websites, search terms, and databases to get your information

15. In partners go through the checklist provided and evaluate these two websites. http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_fo/fo_oct_exhibit.aspf you finish early go into the schooldatabases and search for octopus information. Lets Practice