Searching Effectively in an Online Environment

1. Searching Effectively in an Online Environment Presented by: Debbie Kaleva, NSCC Campus Librarian Suzanne van den Hoogen, Emerging Services Librarian, StFX University June 11th & 18th, 2012

2. Learning Outcomes • Finding Information • Developing Effective Search Strategies • Applying Search Strategies to Databases, WWW and beyond • 5 Ws of Research • Who uses? Everyone? Want to buy a puppy • Who’s done some research? • When • Where • Why • What

3. 5 Ws of Research

4. Search Strategies

5. Taming the Beast!

6. Key Words Select your key words carefully • 17th century women’s shoes, is much narrower than “Antiques” • Avoid using words like “A” “An” or “The” • Examples: • When were the Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia? • When do asiatic lilies bloom?

7. Phrase Searching “ “ • To search a string of words as a “phrase”, simply use quotation marks around your search terms. • Atlantic + Ocean or “Atlantic Ocean” • Microsoft + Office or “Microsoft Office”

8. Boolean Operators • AND (+) Narrows your search • OR Broadens your search • NOT (-) Makes your search more precise

9. Boolean Operator: AND (+) Example: What is the relationship between health and exercise? Health +Exercise Health AND Exercise

10. Boolean Operator: OR Example: You are looking for information on where to send your son/daughter to UNIVERSITY? College OR University

11. Boolean Operator: NOT (-) Example: You are looking to get a new pet. You want to look for information on cats, but NOT dogs Cat –dog Cat NOT Dog

12. Wildcards: * $ ! ? • Also known as “Truncation” or “Stemming” • Wildcard Symbols may vary: • * • $ • ! • ? • Example: • Teen* teens • teenage • teenager • teenagers

13. Wildcards: * ? $ ! • Wildcards also allow us to search for the answers to specific questions, or variations of specific words • Examples: “Thermometer was invented by *” “Traffic light was invented by ?” Wom?n (women, woman) • Note: Remember to verify the wildcard symbols used by individual databases

14. Domain/Site Search • You can limit your search to a specific domain(site). • Domains are “indicators” within a web address that identify the “source” or “location” of the information you are searching. Sample of Top-Level Domain Codes: • .caCanada Country Code • .com company • .coop cooperatives • .gcgovernment Canada • .govgovernment US • .info information • .int international organizations • .org organization • .net network

15. Domain/Site Search Strategy Example #1 Example #2 You can also search a specific website by entering your search term with the URL: “library card” site:parl.ns.ca tuition site:www.nscc.ca Enter your search term with the domain code: • health.org • library.com • family.gc.ca

16. File Search You can search for specific file types on the WWW Examples: Word Document: .doc/docx PowerPoint: .ppt Adobe Acrobat: .pdf Excel Spreadsheet: .xls/xlsx

17. File Type Search Strategy: filetype:ppt “Earth Day” filetype:doc “Earth Day” filetype:pdf “Earth Day”

18. Synonym Search ~ You can search for synonyms by using the tilde symbol immediately preceding your search term: ~ Examples: ~cow ~drugs ~exercise ~pollution

19. Thank You!

20. Feedback Your opinion matters! We welcome your comments and suggestions about today’s workshop and possible future workshops.