Internet Search Skills

1
Internet Search Skills

• Boise Collister Library

2
Search Engines

• What Do Search Engines Do?
• They search the internet, or parts of it, based
  on keywords
  
• They index words from individual web pages
• They navigate a fluid environment- the web is
  constantly changing. What you find today might be
  gone tomorrow
  

3
How they search and retrieve results

• Spider Program that crawls the web from link
  to link, identifying and reading pages.
  
• Index Database with a copy of each Web
  page gathered by the spider and all the
  keywords listed in them
  
• Search engine mechanism Software that enables
  users to query the index and that returns
  results in relevancy ranked order

4
Expanding and Restricting Searches

• Using Google, the largest and most commonly used
  search engine, lets explore different ways to
  expand or restrict a search.
  
• If you typed Idaho Fishing in the Google search
  box Google assumes you want to search for both
  terms.

5
Advanced Searching
6
Advanced Searching

• Allows you to
• Choose OR statements
• Choose NOT statement (or use minus sign
  Idaho fishing)
  
• Search for phrases (or use quotes Idaho
  fishing)
  
• Search in other languages
• Search within a site or domain

7
Search Tips

• Capitalization doesnt matter, but spelling
  does
  
• idaho fly fishing and IDAHO FLY FISHING same
  results
  
• Flies Idaho and Flys Idaho not the same
• A simple spelling error can change the content
  completely. Flies Idaho will get you information
  about buying fishing flies. Flys Idaho will get
  you aviation sites.
• Most search engines will give you a recommended
  spelling if it thinks you spelled a word
  incorrectly.
  
• Did you mean flies fishing
• By clicking on the new link you can re-run your
  search based on the suggested spelling.
  

8
Best Search Tools

• Narrow your search based on what youre looking
  for.
  
• Images, video, news, maps

9
Types of Websites

• Websites can come from a variety of sources.
  Knowing what the source is can help you determine
  the accuracy of the information.
  
• Check the web address/url for these letters
• com commercial businesses (most common)
• gov U.S. government agencies
• edu Educational institutions such as
  universities
  
• org Organizations (mostly non-profit)
• mil Military
• net Network Organizations

10
Popular Search Results

• Wikipedia Free encyclopedia that is web based.
• Good if you want basic information about
  something.
  
• Youtube Video sharing website owned by Google
• Good if you want a video of something. (ex.
  Instructional knitting)
  
• Blogs Personal diary on the internet. Any person
  can publish a blog. Popular sites are blogger,
  blogspot, xanga, bloglines.
  
• Good if you are looking for entertainment
  purposes or you want personal opinion about a
  subject.

11
Evaluating Websites

• Because anyone can post anything on the Internet
  it is important that you remain critical of what
  you read.  Here are some key elements you should
  look at to ascertain if the website provides
  useful and valid information.
• Purpose -What is the purpose of the web site? 
• Authority - Who created it and maintains it and
  vouches for its content?
  
• Currency - Is the site out of date?
• Objectivity/bias - Are they trying to sell you
  something?
  
• Appropriateness - What audience are they writing
  for?
  
• For more discussion about evaluating websites
  visit
  
• www.virtualchase.com/quality/checklist.html
• lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html 

12
Spot the Fake!

• Look at these websites and decide if they are
  real or fake.
  
• http//www.mcwhortle.com/index.htm     
• http//www.dhmo.org      
• http//www.accessidaho.org  
• http//haggishunt.scotsman.com