Effective  Searching  Strategies 1. Getting  ready  to  search.   •

Write  down  what  you  already  know  about  the  subject.  Write  down   what  you  STILL  NEED  TO  FIND  OUT.  

•

Brainstorm!  Write  down  useful  words  you  can  think  of  about  the   subject.    Example:  If  you  are  searching  for  information  on  Abraham   Lincoln  some  other  words  to  include  in  the  search  might  be:   “president”  “reconstruction”  “honest  Abe”  “Civil  War”    

2. Choosing  search  tools.   A) Books:  Use  the  online  catalog  at  your  library  to  find  books  or  videos  on   the  subject.   B) The  Internet:  Choose  a  search  engine   •

Google:  biggest  search  engine  and  includes  additional  databases   www.google.com    

•

Yahoo:  has  shortcuts  to  dictionaries,  synonyms,  patents,  encyclopedia   http://search.yahoo.com/  

•

Exalead:  claims  to  have  over  8  billion  searchable  pages   www.exalead.com/search/    

•

If  you  don’t  find  what  you  are  looking  for  at  one  site,  go  to    another.  

3. Helpful  Tips   •

Be  specific:  If  need  info  on  blue  jays,  don’t  type  “birds”  type  “bluejays”  

•

Put  words  in  quotation  marks: Ex: "Toronto Blue Jays" will bring up the baseball team while Toronto Blue Jays will often give you the city and the birds.  

•

Capitalize: If searching a proper noun (city, place, person) capitalizing it will increase the chance of getting info you want. Ex: “China “will give you the country; “china” will give you sites on dishes!  

•

Be site specific: Limit your search to only a certain type of site (for example, "Thomas Edison" site:edu).  

•

Check spelling  

•

Try other words  

4. Boolean  phrase:  using  “and”  “or”  “not”  and  other  symbols  in  your  search   Symbol  or  phrase   Plus  sign  and   parentheses   +  or  “  “  

Excluding     -­‐  word  or  not  or  and   not   OR      

AND  

Definition   Common  words  such  as   “which”  and  “that”  are   left  out  of  searches.   Search  which  versus   that   Only  versus  is  searched   on   If  you  want  certain   things  left  out  of  the   search  results  

Example   If  you  are  looking  for   the  difference  in  which   versus  that  type  in:       +which  versus  +that   “which  versus  that”    

“Saturn”  –  car   Saturn  NOT  car   Will  give  you  info  on   planet  Saturn  and  not   the  car  Saturn   Gives  info  in  which   College  or  university   either  or  both  of  the   or  campus   words  appear     Will  give  you  results   with  any  of  those  terms   Gives  info  in  which  both   Carbon  dioxide  AND   words  appear   greenhouse  effect     Gives  results  containing   both  words  

NEAR    

         

Similar  to  AND  but  also   requires  the  words  be   within  16  words  of  each   other  (only  in   Exalead.com  search   engine)  

“global  warming”   NEAR  “sea  level  rise”     requires  the  two   phrases  to  occur  within   16  words  of  each  other