Information Literacy Course

1
Information Literacy Course

• Visit your Library
• Sunday to Thursday 7.30am to 10pm
• Closed Friday
• Saturday 9am to 5pm
• Or call the friendly staff on
• Ext 377 for Service Desk,
• Ext 389 for the Librarian.

2
Module 6 Internet Searching

• In this module, you will learn
• Helpful search strategies and search
  engines,
• How to refine a search using Advanced Google,
  and
• How to evaluate websites.

3
Whats in an Address?
Protocol
Domain
http//www.name.type.country
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
World Wide Web
Name of site Google Amazon HCT
Type of site edu gov com org net
Country Code ae uk ca aus
4
Search Strategies

• Be Specific put your most important keywords
  first in the string. For example Hurricane
  Katrina USA.

5
Capitalization

• Use capitals in the correct place. Some search
  Engines can tell the differences between upper
  and lower case. For example
• UNESCO, HCT, Emirates Today, Burj Al Arab

6
Different Spellings

• Many countries use different spellings and
  sometimes different terms. For example
• Organization / organisation,
• Ayers Rock / Uluru,
• United Kingdom / England / Britain,
• Beetles / Beatles

7
Truncation

• Star Symbol allows similar words, plurals and
  different ways of spelling to be returned. For
  example
• garden gardens, gardening, gardener
• comput computer, computers, computing

8
Phrase Searching

• Use inverted comas, when words must appear in
  the document exactly as typed. For example
• golf clubs, national anthem, Abu Dhabi
  Mens College

9
Include and Exclude
A useful tip to help reduce the number of hits
you may get from a search.

• Include () allows particular words to be
  included
• Exclude (-) removes a word from a search. For
  example
• John Lennon lyrics - Beatles

10
Search Engines

• Use search engines when you
• Have an unclear topic or idea to research,
• Are looking for a specific site but dont know
  the address,
• Want to find a large number of documents on your
  topic,
• Want to take advantage of the latest retrieval
  technologies such as concept clustering, ranking
  by popularity, link ranking and so on, or
• Know there is not much information available on
  your topic.

11
Choices

• Google
• www.google.com
• Yahoo
• www.yahoo.com
• Ask
• www.ask.com
• AllTheWeb
• www.altheweb.com
• HotBot
• www.hotbot.com

12
Search Engine Comparisons

• Search Engine Showdown
• http//www.searchengineshowdown.com
• Search Engine Watch
• http//www.searchenginewatch.com/

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