Searching Tips & Techniques
Where to start you search:
Google is a familiar, easy to use search engine, however, it makes calculations based on the popularity of a site not on the content of information (Cassell and Hiremath, 2011). It's recommended that more than one search engine is utilized when seeking information.
Dogpile
Dogpile is a meta-search engine which reviews the search engines "Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, and content from Losmiz and Fandango" all in one search (Cassell and Hiremath, 2011, p. 281). Beware when using Dogpile that it provides advertisements before it lists the results.
Internet Public Library
Internet Public Library is an excellent place to begin your search because it is a monitored website with information reviewed by librarians for its accuracy. It will help guide you toward academic websites and authoritative information. From here you may begin to build better search terms for a a more precise search in a search engine.
Academic libraries provide excellent databases for research to students, faculty and other school associates. Further, library and faculty members are available to help discuss more in-depth search techniques. Some academic libraries offer access to non-students through subscription or as a service to the community. Do inquire if you are not enrolled but require the library services.
Search problem examples:
Say you want to search YouTube or a similarly large website, but aren't having much luck finding fruitful results. There is a better way to search, and that is doing a site search through Google. Let’s use YouTube and IP as an example.
To achieve this, go to Google, and perform a search that looks something like this:
site:youtube.com “intellectual property”
This allows you to limit your Google search only to YouTube, and placing intellectual property in quotations finds only those exact terms in that specific order -- essentially, just the phrase itself. For more general results, you can remove the quotations.
Pay attention to your wording while you search. You don’t want to muddy your search with too many words or details. Avoiding prepositions (like “to,” or “of”) might help turn up better results, as well as surrounding an exact phrase with quotations, like the first example above.
Google is a familiar, easy to use search engine, however, it makes calculations based on the popularity of a site not on the content of information (Cassell and Hiremath, 2011). It's recommended that more than one search engine is utilized when seeking information.
Dogpile
Dogpile is a meta-search engine which reviews the search engines "Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, and content from Losmiz and Fandango" all in one search (Cassell and Hiremath, 2011, p. 281). Beware when using Dogpile that it provides advertisements before it lists the results.
Internet Public Library
Internet Public Library is an excellent place to begin your search because it is a monitored website with information reviewed by librarians for its accuracy. It will help guide you toward academic websites and authoritative information. From here you may begin to build better search terms for a a more precise search in a search engine.
Academic libraries provide excellent databases for research to students, faculty and other school associates. Further, library and faculty members are available to help discuss more in-depth search techniques. Some academic libraries offer access to non-students through subscription or as a service to the community. Do inquire if you are not enrolled but require the library services.
Search problem examples:
Say you want to search YouTube or a similarly large website, but aren't having much luck finding fruitful results. There is a better way to search, and that is doing a site search through Google. Let’s use YouTube and IP as an example.
To achieve this, go to Google, and perform a search that looks something like this:
site:youtube.com “intellectual property”
This allows you to limit your Google search only to YouTube, and placing intellectual property in quotations finds only those exact terms in that specific order -- essentially, just the phrase itself. For more general results, you can remove the quotations.
Pay attention to your wording while you search. You don’t want to muddy your search with too many words or details. Avoiding prepositions (like “to,” or “of”) might help turn up better results, as well as surrounding an exact phrase with quotations, like the first example above.