Searcher

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Searchers Toolkit

• Boolean logic, controlled vocabulary, field
  searching, and more

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The Searchers Toolkit

• Boolean logic
• How parentheses affect the order of operation
• Controlled vocabulary
• Field searching
• Proximity and phrase searching
• Truncation (wildcarding)
• Limits
• Pearl Growing a search strategy

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Basic Tool 1 Boolean Logic

• Boolean logic is traditionally presented with
  drawings called Venn Diagrams

A
B
A
B
NOT
OR A OR B - either one, or both
AND A AND B - only items that have both
A
B
A NOT B - A only when B is not present
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Order of Boolean Operations

• A statement using just one Boolean operator -
  ducks OR geese - is straightforward.
• But what happens when you have more than one
  operator in a search statement?
• The easiest thing is to group them with
  parentheses, and make them behave the way you
  want.

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A 3-way Venn diagram
Here we have (A OR B) AND C What area would
represent A OR (B AND C) (A OR B) NOT C ?
B
A
C
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Pause

• Human Venn Diagram activity

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Basic Tool 2 Controlled Vocabulary

• If a database offers a set of controlled
  vocabulary a.k.a. subject headings, thesaurus,
  descriptors, authority control - how does this
  help us?

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Controlled Vocabulary

• Theoretically makes our search more complete if
  we know that every time an article mentions
  geese, or goose, or duck, or loons, or any other
  water bird, it gets assigned the subject
  waterfowl - we just have to search on that
  term, and we should get everything.

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Basic Tool 3 Field Searching

• Field Searching simply means the ability to
  restrict your search to a particular field, e.g.,
  look for a name in an author field.
• Field searching will focus your search, and
  usually make it more efficient.
• The database designers spent all that time
  deciding what fields to have - so definitely
  exploit this feature if it is available!
  (especially useful combined with controlled
  vocabulary) 1

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Basic Tool 4 Proximity Operators

• Proximity operators allow you to specify that
  termA appears within so many words of termB.
  EBSCO uses
• teenagers N5 homeless - i.e., near
• homeless W3 teenagers - i.e. within
• The more text a database has, the more important
  the ability to do proximity searching becomes.
• Why?

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Really close proximity Phrase Searching

• Searching on exact phrases can be extremely
  important in some cases, and the inability of
  some databases to do this (easily) can really
  inhibit how effectively you can search.
• What is the common way to do this on the Web?

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Basic Tool 5 Truncation (wildcarding)

• Truncation allows you to search on a word stem
  and retrieve any word beginning with those
  letters, e.g.harmon
• retrieves harmony, harmonious, harmonica
• employ
• retrieves employee, employment, employer,
  employed

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Limits constrain your search

• Limits - preset options to choose from to further
  define your search, such as
• Date
• Full text
• Scholarly (peer reviewed)
• Publication (newspaper, journal, etc.) or article
  type (review, editorial, etc.)
• Language

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(No Transcript)
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A handy search strategy

• Pearl Growing
• This charming expression refers to the process of
  doing a very broad search first - high recall! -
  then examining the results, and finding subject
  headings, or discovering further terms to search
  on from the most on-target hits.
• This is very useful when you are venturing into a
  new database and/or unfamiliar subject matter.

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And thats your toolkit

• So now you have some concepts, some tools that
  youll use over and over, in various
  combinations. My advice, and the approach I will
  take throughout this class is
• Master the concepts. Do not attempt to memorize
  exactly which databases offer which capabilities.
  Instead

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Train Your Eyes!!

• Learn to scan the interface quickly. Look for
  Help or Search Guides. (Actually read them!)
  You now know what to look for - so just look for
  it. For you as a professional, nothing on that
  screen should be noise or ignored - your users
  wont see it, but you must. This is the most
  important thing you can do - LOOK with your
  trained eyes! Because

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Things Can Change at any Time

• Especially now that database vendors have moved
  their products to the Web,1 their interfaces have
  become ever more fluid, just like any other web
  page. I cannot emphasize this enough
• USE YOUR EYES
• They are the best tool you have. 2