Searching the Internet Information Skills tutorial

1. Searching the InternetInformation Skills tutorial Learning Resource Centre Information Services

2. Your aim…. • … to get a small number of • relevant • specific • quality results….

3. Define your search • first of all think about the topic and list the following: • what the topic is • key words • similar words you could use

4. Search Engines • UK - includes Yahoo! UK and Ireland • worldwide - includes Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Google, Go.com • metasearch engines (searches the search engines) - includes Mamma, Metacrawler, Copernic • directory-based - Yellow Pages, Scoot

5. Search Engines • Google - www.google.com • Yahoo!UK and Ireland - www.yahoo.co.uk • Yahoo! - www.yahoo.com • Metacrawler - www.metacrawler.com • Mamma - www.mamma.com • and many more

6. Using the Advanced Search • you usually get a choice of a Basic search or an Advanced search • Advanced Search gives you more boxes to fill in, so you can be more specific • this means you will get fewer, but much morerelevant results

7. Advanced search option here search UK only here Google features

8. Google Advanced Search

9. And / or / not • use AND if you must haveboth terms in the results - e.g. schools and colleges • use OR if you don’t mind either term in the results - e.g. cat or feline • use NOT if you don’t want something in the results - e.g. Liverpool and football not Everton

10. Wildcards • usually * but sometimes ? or another symbol • replaces part of a word • educ* - finds education, educational, educating etc • advert* - finds advert, adverts, advertising, advertisement advertisements, etc • organi*ation - finds organisation or organization • chick* or hen* or poultry or fowl*

11. Quotation marks • finds words next to each other “wild flowers” “landscape design” “mad cow disease”

12. Search engines • single words are ok • put phrases in quotation marks • it doesn’t matter which case you use • some use + instead of AND • the wild card symbol is usually * • look in the Help facility

13. Internet Subject Gateways • these are specially selected websites • chosen by academic experts • arranged by topic or subject area • giving quality information – e.g. • BUBL www.bubl.ac.uk • INTUTE www.intute.ac.uk • PINAKES - More Gateways www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html

14. Evaluating your results are they…..what about… relevant? coverage? accurate? authority? current? content? good quality? sources?

15. Exercise – evaluate a web site http://www.dhmo.org/ Explore the site and evaluate it using www • what are its strengths? • what are its weaknesses? • what is dhmo?

16. Exercise – evaluate a website • Choose any website and evaluate it using a different www • Who is responsible for it? • Where is it from? (which country /organisation/ individual?) • When was it last updated?

17. Exercise – searching with Google try out Google Advanced Search and see how many hits you get… Type a phraseinto the first box, then try searching - • with all of the words • with the exact phrase • with at least one of the words • without one of the words

18. If you don’t get enough results • expand the topic – use more, or different, terms • Tip:find more keywords from previous search results

19. If you get too many results • if you get too many hits, you need to • refine your search • narrow it down by setting Limits (by year, language etc) • try different key words

20. General tips... • always check the Help facility • be prepared to do many searches using different keywords • use keywords from your previous search results • the more operators and limits you use, the more relevant your results will be

21. Useful books in the library • searching the Internet • online searching • search engine guides • study skills section

22. Search strategies • …for more advanced search strategies…. • Try our AdvancedSearch Strategies tutorial

23. Finally….. • Please ask the library staff if you need help • Happy searching!

24. Thank you ! Learning Resource Centre Information Services