Word of the Day

1. Word of the Day URL Uniform resource locator – or Web address, unique to every web page www.carpeindexum.com/libs100mw/sum05.htm

2. Searching and Boolean Operators LIBS100 June 8, 2005

3. Web browsers: Computer software that allows you to view WWW documents • Internet Explorer (Microsoft) • Netscape Navigator/Communicator • Firefox review

4. Structure of the Web • The Internet : a network of networks; computers linked together that communicate by a shared protocol (TCP/IP) • World Wide Web: data files (e.g., documents, images, videos, etc.) residing on Internet information servers (computers); mainly use HTTP protocol to transfer data

5. Browser Basics • Address Bar- where you can input URL • Go – takes you to address you input • Home icon – pressing this takes you to your home page

6. Browser Basics • Back – takes you back one page • Forward – brings you forward one page • Search bar – where you can input search terms

7. Internet • Exciting place to do research • Often the first place people turn • Overwhelmingly huge • WWW contains “tens of billions” of pages • Google indexes largest number of pages • Reports over 8 billion pages indexed

8. Google • Largest search engine • Crawler-based • Uses software called “crawlers” or “spiders” to automatically search through web pages and follows links • Highly relevant results

9. Google • Created in 1998 by 2 Stanford students • Google is exclusively a search engine • Elegantly simple, easy to use

10. What is a Relevant Result?? A hit that meets your informational need • “Bad results” due to: • Poorly constructed queries • Bad relevance ranking by search engines • Poorly constructed queries

11. How does Google rank web pages?? • Location/frequency • The location of search terms on the web page • How many times search terms appeared • Link popularity (Google PageRank) - number of pages that link TO Page X boosts Page X’s ranking • Penalties for artificially inflating results

12. Google Searches • Automatically adds AND between your terms • Ignores “stop words” the, and, of, to… • Can use other words to broaden or narrow search results Boolean Operators

13. Boolean Logic • George Boole (1815-1864) – Mathemetician who discovered that logical reasoning can be represented in terms of mathematical formulas • Boolean Algebra – Only two conditions allowed 1=True or 0=False • Boolean Query – Search terms joined by AND, OR, NOT

14. Boolean Operators • AND – locates records containing both terms. • OR – locates records containing either term • NOT – locates records containing first term, but not the second • In Google (and most other search engines) the operators MUST be capitalized

15. Boolean Machine http://kathyschrock.net/rbs3k/boolean/

16. Which query will give us the most hits? endangered (AND) birds endangered OR birds endangered NOT birds birds NOT endangered

17. Boolean Math • AND use the + sign • NOT use the – sign • “Multiplier” enclose phrase in quotes No space between search terms and sign!

18. Modifying Searches • Based on results list, modify your search string to get better results • Add, delete or change terms used • Use “quotation marks” to search for a phrase

19. Work for Monday • Tyner, Ross. “Choosing and Developing a Topic.” Okanagan University College 31 Jan 2004. 3 May 2005 http://www.ouc.bc.ca/library/eil/research/topic.html . • Quiz moved to Wednesday, June 15th

20. References • Rothenberger, Michelle. “Search Engines.” Accessed 6 Feb 2005 http://www.carpeindexum.com/libs100/srcheng/srchdir.ppt • Staff. “Resources, INFS100.” Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Accessed 6 Feb 2005 • Sullivan, Danny. “Search Features Chart.” Searchenginewatch.com 26 Oct 2001. Accessed 6 Feb 2005 http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/2155981