CONDUCTING RESEARCH

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CONDUCTING RESEARCH

• A SENSIBLE APPROACH!

• BY
• PAPIA BAWA

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BOOLEAN COMMANDS

• These are a set of commands that let you specify
  a search more precisely.

• AND
• OR
• NOT
• ADJ
• NEAR
• "x x"

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WHAT DO THEY DO?

• AND
• Example
• poverty AND crime
• Query    I'm interested in the relationship
  between poverty and crime.

• In this search, we retrieve records in which BOTH
  of the search terms are present.
• We do not retrieve any records with only
  "poverty" or only "crime.

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How AND logic works

• Search terms
• Results
• poverty
• 783,447
• crime
• 2,962,165
• poverty AND crime
• 1,677

• The more terms or concepts we combine in a search
  with AND logic, the fewer records we will
  retrieve.

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CONTINUED

• OR
• Example
• college OR university
• Query    I would like information about
  college.

• We will retrieve records in which AT LEAST ONE of
  the search terms is present.
• We are searching on the terms college and also
  university since documents containing either of
  these words might be relevant.

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How OR logic works

• Search terms
• Results
• college
• 17,320,770
• university
• 33,685,205
• college OR university
• 33,702,660

• The more terms or concepts we combine in a search
  with OR logic, the more records we will retrieve.

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CONTINUED

• NOT
• Example
• cats NOT dogs
• I want information about cats, but I want to
  avoid anything about dogs.

• We retrieve records in which ONLY ONE of the
  terms is present.
• No records are retrieved in which the word "dogs"
  appears, even if the word "cats" appears there
  too.

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How NOT logic works

• Search terms
• Results
• cats
• 3,651,252
• dogs
• 4,556,515
• cats NOT dogs
• 81,497

• Be careful when you use NOT the term you do want
  may be present in an important way in documents
  that also contain the word you wish to avoid.

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CONTINUED

• ADJ

• Links side-by-side words
• Mister ADJ Mustard finds everything about that
  condiment

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CONTINUED

• NEAR

• Links words that appear near one another
• Retirement NEAR/20 stocks finds everything that
  links up retirement and stocks

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CONTINUED

• Requires the work that follows to be in the
  results
• retirement NEAR/20 stocks only finds sites with
  retirement near stocks

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CONTINUED

• keywords in quotes"

• Links a string of words
• "Son of Sam" will find everything with that exact
  phrase

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ADVANCED SEARCHING HELP

• Although these are common Boolean operators, not
  every search engine uses these terms.

• You need to check each search engine's Advanced
  Searching Help page to see just what that engine
  allows you to do.

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Matching Your Current Information Needs

• Here is a list some of the common ways to utilize
  net contents to suit your information needs.

• Next to the annotations, are search engines that
  might be good choices for locating each kind of
  information.

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IF YOU NEED CONTEXT

• You want an overview
• You want evaluated sites

• YAHOO organizes information as "subject trees"
  from general to specific topics.
• Magellan is a smaller database that reviews sites
  and is good for business.

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CONTEXT CONTINUED

• You want evaluated sites

• Point rates the "Best 5 of the Web." WebCrawler
  is a smaller database with relevancy rankings.

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CONTEXT CONTINUED

• You want to search on a sentence describing your
  interest.
• You want to browse.

• Infoseek allows natural language searches.
• YAHOO subject trees give short descriptions.

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IF YOU NEED SPECIFIC INFORMATION

• You want a few relevant hits.
• You want broad coverage.

• Excite has summaries. When you find a relevant
  hit, you can also submit a "query by example" to
  locate similar pages.
• MetaCrawler searches the 9 major databases and
  integrates results.

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SPECIFIC INFOMATION CONTINUED

• You need to do a pinpoint search.

• Alta Vista a massive and fast indexer of full
  text that is good for very specific searches.
  (HotBot) fast, powerful, with ranked results and
  options for defining a search.

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SPECIFIC INFOMATION CONTINUED

• You need information about a patent.
• You need scientific information.

• InfoSeek has a specific search for patent
  information.
• Alta Vista has consistently rated highly in
  finding scientific information.

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YOU NEED TO CUT OUT

• You have common keywords in a phrase like A in
  Vitamin A that cannot be ignored.
• You need to search by date.

• Infoseek's Ultraseek includes words in a phrase
  that other engines ignore.
• HotBot can limit by date.

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NEED TO CUT CONTINUED

• You need programming language (e.g., JavaScript).
  
• You need to search for a proper name.

• HotBot can limit by be programming language.
• Ultraseek and Alta Vista recognize
  capitalization. HotBot retrieves names in both
  reversed and normal order (e.g. Picasso, Pablo
  and Pablo Picasso).

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NEED TO CUT CONTINUED

• You want web pages from a geographic region.
• You want to search for images, sounds.

• MetaCrawler can search be continentYAHOO
  cross-references pages in a regional
  classification.
• Infoseek's Imageseek, Lycos' Media, and HotBot
  allow you to search for media type or file
  extensions.

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Searching with Subject Directories

• Subject directories work well when you need to
  find information on a topic that fits a
  directorys categories.

• It is fairly easy, for example, to find travel
  information for almost any country because most
  directories cover travel and organize the travel
  information by country.

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HOWEVER

• It may be harder to find information on a topic
  that splits categories.

• For example information on ergonomics for the
  elderly, in order to better design and market
  cellular phones to them.

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Some subject directories

• Most subject directories include some human
  arrangement of sites into topical categories.

• C/NEThttp//www.search.comGalaxyhttp//galaxy.
  einet.net/
• Looking Smarthttp//www.looksmart.com/

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Subject directory features

• Lycostop 5 of Lycos siteshttp//www.lycos.com
  /
• InfoSpacegood start for company information
  http//mckinley.netcom.com
• Yahoo!premiere subject directory that shows an
  organization of web-worldbrgt http//www.yahoo.com/
  

• Edited by humans.
• Tend to be on target in their classifications.
• Include fewer sites than the robot-driven search
  engines.
• More obscure topics will have fewer resources
  mentioned in subject directories.

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Weaknesses of Subject Directories

• Its hard to find out how much is included in the
  directory.
• If you are dealing with an interdisciplinary
  topic, it is often hard to figure out what
  subjects to choose.

• Tip
• Use subject directories for popular topics
  and larger search engines for more obscure
  topics.

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Online Reference Rooms

• These are sites that collect reference resources.

• These collections point to
• Government documents
• Reference sites for various subject areas
• Dictionaries
• Thesauri
• Phone books
• Maps
• Electronic journals (which will yield full texts
  of articles).

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My Virtual Reference Desk

• You can find this in (www.refdesk.com/)
  maintained by Bob Drudge.

• What it does for your researching skills.
• Helps you understand the types of information
  likely to be available on the web
• Points you to numerous web reference sources
  (over 10,000).

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List of links in VRD

• My Virtual Reference Desk is not glossy, has no
  fancy graphics, and makes no high-tech claims.

• It just delivers labeled links to thousands of
  sites.
• These lists of links are alphabetized in one of
  the following categories.

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VRD Links

• First Things First links to check daily
• Quick Reference FAQs
• My Search Engines a massive list of 260 good
  source for specialized engines

• My Virtual Newspaper is a list of sources for
  current news (newspapers
• My Facts Page is a list of ready reference works
  online (including almanacs, dictionaries,
  thesauri, atlases, and so on)

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VRD Links Continued

• My Virtual Encyclopedia has 41 subject categories
• My Weather Sites has almost 150 weather-related
  sites

• New Links are for seasoned users who dont want
  to miss a new link
• My Homework Helper is good for high school and
  college students

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Online sources not on the net

• Tile.Net reports news groups, mailing lists, ftp
  siteshttp//tile.net/

• Dejanews guide to USENET news groupshttp//www.de
  janews.com

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Other miscellaneous sources

• Liszt searches for appropriate e-mail
  groupshttp//www.liszt.com

• Libweb lists 1700 libraries (and their card
  catalogs)http//sunsite.berkeley.edu/Libweb

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Few tips

• Once you start finding sources you like, make
  bookmarks for those sources and keep notes on
  what you find at those bookmarked sites.

• Document the call number (location) and the
  publishers information.

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Few tips

• You need to budget time for research into your
  project schedule.

• If you dont budget time for research, then all
  of the searching you do may end up coming out of
  your sleeping time!

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I am done teaching you now!

• But then you already knew everything, Right?

• Well, Bye for now.