Searching Tips

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Searching Tips

• El Centro College Library

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I cant find anything!
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El Centro Library to the rescue!

• Databases links to articles, e-books and more!
• Web Links - reliable sites weve discovered to
  save you time!
• MLA/APA Examples - tips on writing your paper and
  work cited, along with examples on how to cite
  books, magazines, newspapers, web sites

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Whats next?

• Ready to search? Lets look at how to narrow and
  focus your topic by

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Using Search Techniques

• Brainstorm using keywords
• Boolean and, or and not
• Phrase Searching using quote marks
• Advanced Searching by domain
• More details to follow!

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Brainstorm with Keywords

• When you dont know what something is called, use
  all the words you can think of to describe it in
  a keyword search
• Synonyms
• Abbreviations
• Variations on a word (tv or television or media)
• Opposites

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Boolean Operators

• Define the relationship between words or groups
  of words
• AND narrows your search because both terms must
  be found
• OR broadens your search because either term may
  be found
• NOT excludes a term from your search

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• Boolean
• AND OR NOT

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Nesting Boolean Operators

• (foxes OR rabbits) AND pest control

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Search Engine Math

• (AND)
• - (NOT)

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Phrase Searching

• Examples
• "assisted suicide"
• "better business bureau"
• "gun control"
• "hate crimes
• "war crimes tribunal
• "william shakespeare"

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Truncation

• is the most common truncation symbol
• terror will retrieve
• terror, terrorism, terrorist, terrorists,
  terrorize, terrorized, terrorizing
• rat will retrieve
• rat, rats, rate, rationalize, ratio,
  ratify,
• rather, and all other words beginning
• with the letters rat

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Proximity Searching

• Searching for two or more words that appear a
  specific number of words apart
• N (near) words can be in any order
• dallas N5 cowboys
• Dallas Cowboys or cowboys in Dallas
  
• W (within) words must be in the exact order
• tax W5 reform
• tax reform
• will not find - reform of taxes

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Wild Cards ?

• Can substitute for 1 character
• colo?r
• retrieves either color or colour
• wom?n
• retrieves either woman or women
• comput??
• retrieves compute or computer or
• computed but not computers or
• computing

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• Field Searching vs Keyword
• Title
• Domain

In a Yahoo Search t - will restrict searches to
document titles onlycompare olympics versus
tolympics u - will restrict searches to
document URLs onlycompare australia versus uau
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Limit the Results

• Limitors
• full text
• by periodical title
• date range
• scholarly/peer reviewed journal
• articles with images

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Additional Limits

• Search Options
• publication type (varies with database)
• periodical
• newspaper
• book
• primary source document

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Evaluating Web Sites for Accuracy
An alarming number of web sites are parodies,
hate sites, heavily biased or simply
non-authoritative. In a recent informal survey
of Year 7 students, it was found that nearly 60
of the students could not differentiate between a
news item and an advertisement on an authentic
newspaper page. Can the average student
differentiate between the factual or otherwise on
the Internet, let alone locate them?
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Good Luck!

• Ask a Librarian for Help!
• Check out our website for more info
• http//www.elcentrocollege.edu/library/