SEARCH TECHNIQUES

1
SEARCH TECHNIQUES

• Do you want to spend your time searching for
  information ?
• Would you rather find your information quickly
  and get to work on your assignment?
• If your answers was no and yes, then follow these
  simple techniques to make your search more
  efficient and effective.

2
SEARCH TECHNIQUES

• Search engines
• Definition - A search engine is a piece of
  software, available to all users on the Web which
  allows the user to locate all related sites using
  a keyword search. More sophisticated search
  engines search a variety of other search engines
  and allow you to search using Boolean logic.
• Some examples of search engines are
• yahoo - www.yahoo.com
• webcrawler - www.webcrawler.com
• ask jeeeves - www.ask.com
• mamma - www.mamma.com
• google - www.google.com
• dogpile - www.dogpile.com

3
Search techniques

• Boolean logic
• definition- refers to a system of logical
  thought developed by the English mathematician,
  George Boole.
• Explanation
• using the following terms and punctuation marks
  
• and or
• or
• not or -
• quotation marks
• parentheses
• A search can be quickly made that excludes
  websites that contain irrelevant material

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Search Techniques

• Example-use of the word and or
• Indicates search for keyword one and keyword
  two.
• When searching for information on the holocaust,
  you would come up with a results list that would
  contain many websites that had information on the
  holocaust. To narrow your search to information
  on the Warsaw ghetto, you would type in
  holocaust and Warsaw ghettoor holocaust
  Warsaw ghetto. This tells the search engine to
  eliminate sites that do not contain both words.
• Example- use of the word or
• When searching for information on a project for
  art class, you would enter the keywords pottery
  or ceramics. This will give you a list of
  websites that contain information on both
  keywords.
• .

5
Search Techniques

• Example- use of the word not or -
• When searching for information on cowboys of the
  American west, type cowboys not Dallasor
  cowboys - Dallas to eliminate sites about the
  Dallas Cowboys.
• Example- quotation marks
• The use quotation marks indicates to the search
  engine to search for that exact word or phrase.
  If you type in Helen of Troy without quotation
  marks, you get a list of websites that contain
  such items as information about Helen Hayes, the
  actress, and real people named Helen. However,
  it requires a lot of sifting through information
  to find the information on Helen of Troy. The
  use of quotation marks will cut down on a lot of
  useless scanning.
• Example- use of parentheses
• When searching for Pennsylvania colleges, type
  Pennsylvania and (colleges or universities).
  This will give you a more complete list.