1. Identify and use common Internet search tools for finding information. 2. Distinguish between search engines and subject directories.

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1 When you have completed this unit you should be able to: 1. Identify and use common Internet search tools for finding information. 2. Distinguish between search engines and subject directories. 3. Choose appropriate search tools for your searches. 4. Use search strategies to find relevant information. INTERNET RESEARCH SKILLS: 1. Read Unit 7 - Part 1 on the Library Skills web page or at the Reference Desk. 2. Pick up Exercise 7 - Part 1 at the Reference Desk or download it and complete it. 3. Go back to the Reference Desk and turn in your exercise to have it checked by a librarian. You may pick it up the next school day to make any corrections. ADDITIONAL READING: LPC Library Skills Text Links: Unit 7 Part 1. Livermore, CA: LPC, Oct < Find links to good Internet tutorials such as: Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial (UC Berkeley) Finding It Online: Web Search Strategies Internet Tutorials: Search the Internet (Univ. of Albany) DO NOT HESITATE TO ASK QUESTIONS IF YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS. LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 1

2 Las Positas College Library Homepage: Internet Links Internet Tutorials < LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 2

3 INTERNET RESEARCH SKILLS The Internet provides various kinds of information and services to help you with your research. For example: The World Wide Web (not available on library terminals except through Internet mail servers such as Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.) The library catalog and electronic print resources (research databases, such as Academic Search Premier), which are accessed through the Internet Information: daily news; newspaper and magazine articles; government documents; research papers; election information and results; country, state, county and city data; earthquake maps; weather reports; daily news; and much more Downloadable computer programs and music Discussion and news groups (not available on library terminals) This unit will discuss how to determine which search tools to use and how to develop a search strategy when using those tools. The trick is to find the most authoritative and reliable information for your research needs without wasting time wading through useless sites. The following information is limited to general information about searching, with directions to online resources that will more likely stay up-to-date than a printed source, such as this text. This unit covers web search engines and subject directories. Search Engines & Subject Directories Getting Started: Guides and Tutorials A printed guide to using the Internet becomes quickly out of date. It is best to learn where you can find good guides to using the Internet on the web that are updated frequently. UC Berkeley has an excellent guide to the Internet that is kept up. You will find this site on the LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 3

4 INTERNET LINKS page, under Internet Tutorials, called Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial < The table of contents is illustrated to show some of the topics covered. The Internet provides access to some powerful search tools to locate information on the web. Try the Search Engines link on the UC Berkeley Tutorial web page to see some of the most useful search sites (divided into search engines and subject directories) found on the Internet. UC Berkeley s Teaching Library recommends specific search tools along with good search tips, such as how to plan your web search strategy, and guides to the best search engines and subject directories. Illustrated below is a part of the Search Engines webpage. LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 4

5 Next, try the link to Subject Directories for more information on directory sites that evaluate the websites that they include Search tools vary according to the type of web database searched: 1. Search engines, such as Google, Teoma, and Yahoo!, are searchable databases composed of full-text web pages that are compiled by computer robot programs and owned by companies providing these services on the Web. Search engine databases always contain the searchable full-text of Web pages. Search engines use keywords to locate information on specific topics. Searches in a search engine such as Google results in millions of hits because Google searches through the full text of every web page it indexes. 2. Subject directories, such as Librarians Internet Index (lii.org), Infomine, Academic Info, and About.com, are smaller focused databases that are often compiled by subject experts (not computer robot programs) and are usually organized in subject categories with short descriptions or summaries. Subject directories do not contain the full text of every web page, just the title of selected web pages, the URL, and the short description. Therefore, you may need to use broader and fewer search terms for effective searches. Searches in a subject LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 5

6 directories such as Librarians Internet Index results in many fewer hits than Google because it searches through only the title and summary of the web page it indexes. Subject directories also group Internet resources by subject categories. Use the constantly updated UC Berkeley s Teaching Library site (illustrated earlier) with its many links to resources for more information. You will become a better researcher if you do. At the bottom of each UC Berkeley s Teaching Library page you can use other links to find more tutorials. Search Engines Search engines use computer programs called web spiders or robots to automatically search the web and index the full text of each page they find and then incorporate these pages into their databases. No person sees or evaluates the documents the robots find before you see them. When you search for information on the web with a search engine, you type keywords related to a topic into a search box. The manner in which you choose your keywords-- modifying, narrowing and broadening them as necessary--will determine the success of your search. The search engine looks over its database of pages and returns a file with links to web sites that contain the keywords. Because the search engine databases are very large, searches often return many thousands of results. You must develop search strategies or techniques to refine what you need, or the process can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Google, Yahoo!, and Teoma are just a few of the many search engines available to you. Remember that each search engine searches its own database that it has created, so that if you do an in-depth search, use at least two different search engines to be sure you get the best results. Google and Teoma are two that work well opposite each other. Some search engines such as Google build their databases on a form of "popularity contest." They choose and rank the web LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 6

7 sites found based on how often other sites link to them. Other search engines rate the sites based on how many surfers have gone to the site and how long they stayed there. Most search engines have a Help or Tips button. Be sure to read these tips for the search engine you use regularly to refine your searching techniques. Once you learn one set of searching techniques, they often work with other search engines. Search engines may give a numerical score to the documents they find for you, listing the documents from most important to least important, according to this score. This score results from a computation based on how many times your keywords were found in the document, compared to how many words the document contained. This would mean that a short document that has your keywords repeated a lot of times would be the first in this ranking system, over a long document, which used your keywords only a few times. The best search engines have the largest databases, such as Google, which reports that it searches billions of web pages, making it the largest search engine database on the web. Because the web is so large, a bigger search engine will be more comprehensive and return more results for your searches. Good search engines, like Google, rank their results in a manner that puts the best hits at the top of their lists for your use. Search engines should also search in a manner that is intuitive to the average searcher. For instance, Google, and most search engines, assume that if you use two or more terms in your search the terms have an AND connecting them so that the Web pages found for the search must contain all the terms (keywords) in it somewhere. If you are doing focused keyword searches, Google will give you good results. However, no matter which search engine you use, it is important to know what your search options are and what is actually happening when you search. Find the Google search tips in the following manner. Go to Google, click on "more>>, then Help Center to find Google Help Center. LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 7

8 Or you may also go the LPC Library Skills page and click on Library Skills Text Links for Chapter 7 - Part 1 to find it. Information on the following pages is excerpted from Google s Help tips: Google: The Essentials of Google Search. Google: June 2005 < Here are some basic tips to help you maximize the effectiveness of your search: Choosing search terms Choosing the right search terms is the key to finding the information you need. Start with the obvious if you're looking for general information on Hawaii, try Hawaii. But it's often advisable to use multiple search terms; if you're planning a Hawaiian vacation, you'll do better with vacation Hawaii than with either vacation or Hawaii by themselves. And vacation Hawaii golf may produce even better (or, depending on your perspective, worse) results. You might also ask yourself if your search terms are sufficiently specific. It's better to search on luxury hotels Maui than on tropical island hotels. But choose your search terms carefully; Google looks for the search terms you chose, so luxury hotels Maui will probably deliver better results than really nice places to spend the night in Maui. Capitalization Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and george washington will all return the same results. Automatic "and" queries By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms. For example, to plan a vacation to Hawaii, simply type vacation hawaii. Automatic exclusion of common words Google ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results. Google will indicate if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page below the search box. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.) Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included in the search. For example, to search for Star Wars, Episode I, use: Star Wars Episode +I ~ OR ~ Star Wars Episode I LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 8

9 Word variations (stemming) Google now uses stemming technology. Thus, when appropriate, it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. If you search for pet lemur dietary needs, Google will also search for pet lemur diet needs, and other related variations of your terms. Any variants of your terms that were searched for will be highlighted in the snippet of text accompanying each result. Phrase searches Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search terms. Phrase searches are particularly effective if you're searching for proper names ("George Washington"), lyrics ("the long and winding road"), or other famous phrases ("This was their finest hour"). Negative terms If your search term has more than one meaning (bass, for example, could refer to fishing or music) you can focus your search by putting a minus sign ("-") in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid. For example, here's how you'd find pages about bass-heavy lakes, but not bass-heavy music: bass -music Note: when you include a negative term in your search, be sure to include a space before the minus sign. In short, if your search returns too many documents that do not focus on the subject you want, refine your search using the previous tips. Use the Help screens for whatever search engine you are using to figure out what works best. Usually the easiest method is to add more keywords to your search, instead of just searching for pollution, try ocean pollution. If that still is too broad, try enclosing "ocean pollution" in quotations as a phrase search. Another technique to narrow a search in Google is to go to the Advanced Search screen and add the domains you want to search such as edu,.org, or.gov. For example, if you want to search only educational institutions, type.edu in the search box next to domain. A search for information from education domains (colleges and universities) will usually retrieve very good resources. Joe Barker of the Infopeople Project suggests that you ask yourself each time you search: What words will be in the pages I want to find? He then offered the following basic search tips. LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 9

10 Formulating effective, uncomplicated searches as simple as : 1. Look for distinctive or unique words and search on them. 2. If you cannot find any, try to find a distinctive group or string of words. Enclose these words in to search them as a distinctive phrase. Remember that you are trying to think of strings of words that will occur in pages you want. 3. If you get too many results to scan, or they aren t focused on your aspect of the topic, add a word that will be in the parts of the pages that you want to see. 4. Think of other words that page creators might have also used for the aspect of the topic you want. Search tem using OR searches, or you can do separate searches combining the most distinctive words with each of the equivalent words. Barker s strongest research tip was the following: Identifying phrases and enclosing them in quotes is your most powerful single search trick. Subject Directories Use a subject directory to search the Internet if you are not finding what you need with one of the big search engines. Human researchers compile the most authoritative directories because the web pages chosen for the directories are evaluated before they are indexed, then are placed in the directory if they have research value. Most of these directories, such as Librarians Internet Index (LII), Infomine, Academic Info, and About.com, are much smaller than the databases of search engines but contain such useful information that students may wish to consult them first. Yahoo! and Google both contain subject directories, but unlike lii.org and the others mentioned, the sites listed are not evaluated. LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 10

11 The following discussion of subject directories will be confined to the small, evaluative directory Librarians Internet Index ( This site contains librarian-selected resources free of commercial and advertising information, so that a user can be assured that the sites have research value. LII is arranged by categories such as Arts & Humanities, Business, Government, People, and so forth, in a hierarchical manner through which you can navigate to find information that you need. If you wish to find interesting topics to research, this is one way to search out a topic and then narrow it but following the LII topics as they become narrower and more specific. To search for something specific, using the categories, it is more difficult. If you were looking for an American author, Edgar Allan Poe, for example, you could click through the directory in the following manner: Arts & Humanities Literature & Books Literary Movements and Periods 19th Century. Then scroll through the list to find Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. This process is tedious enough that you probably would bookmark the page if you thought you might have to return to it often. However, LII also combines its excellent directory function with a keyword search capability so you can search by keyword through all of the titles and short descriptions and subject headings of the web pages in its database, rather than just by hierarchical subject. In this manner you can still find the human-reviewed LII sites using a search engine s speed rather LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 11

12 than clicking through the directory. Therefore, you can perform a keyword search for Edgar Allan Poe or simply Poe to find the information about the author in the directory. Take a couple minutes to peruse LII s Help screen: Basic Search: Tips and Help Caution: LII is a small database of about 17,000 items. The search strategies you use for Google or other search engines may not work well in LII. Our best advice: Keep in mind you are searching our descriptions of the websites, not the sites themselves. Use fewer, broader terms. Instead of Susan Sarandon or Training Day, try movie reviews, actors, or movies. Instead of chocolate pudding, try desserts. Basic Search at a Glance LII supports many common search operators, singly or in combination, including search limiters such as and, or and not, wildcarding, nesting, and quoted expressions. Stemming (a form of truncation, discussed below) is enabled by default. Search results are returned ranked by relevance. Most matched terms will be bolded on the results page, except for keywords and Library of Congress subjects. And, Or, Not (Boolean Operators) And: LII by default supports an and search (find items that include all of the terms: butter and cheese). You do not need to specify the word and unless you are doing a search with other operators. wine beer provides the same results as wine and beer. Or: find all LII items that include either terms: cheese or butter. Not: find all items that have the first term but do not have the second term: butter not peanut. Nesting and Quoted Searches Nesting: Nesting means using parentheses so that search operations are performed in the sequence you intend. Compare (cheese or wine) not racing versus cheese or wine not racing. LII supports multiple nests, e.g. ((cheese or wine) not beer) and butter Quoted searches: Searches letter by letter, exactly as written within the quotation marks. Try "facts for features" and then compare without the quotation marks to see how a quoted search can be very precise. Wildcards and Stemming LII supports wildcarding, that is, truncating searches with an asterisk to retrieve all items matching the letters before the asterisk: suffrag*. LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 12

13 However, most searches don't require truncation, because LII has built-in stemming, which is like truncation but more powerful. Stemming provides automatic support for a wide variety of word variations: run also retrieves running, dessert retrieves desserts, and vice versa. Sometimes stemming yields too many results. (Try a search for communism.) You can disable stemming in Advanced Search. Stopwords (and Getting Around Them) Stopwords are terms that you can't use in a search engine. LII stopwords are the limiters and, or, and not. Quoted searches are the best way to get around these stopwords. See the difference with these two searches: do not call versus "do not call" Fields Searched in a Basic Search An LII basic search searches against words found in the description, title, website address, Library of Congress subject, LII topics, and additional keywords (if any). Search Results Display Order Search results are ordered by relevance, measured by the number of times match words appear in the LII item. An item that uses the term cancer three times will appear above an item that uses the term cancer two times. Search Term Highlighting Some LII search terms--the terms you search LII with--are highlighted (bolded) in results. Search term highlighting displays for Title, URL, Description, Topic, and URL. Search term highlighting does not display for items in the View Info box, such as Publisher, LC Subject, or Site Author. Browse Our Collection Also try browsing our topic pages. We have hundreds of special pages on topics such as Health, Crafts, Cooking, Sports, Libraries, and much more. You may find we have conveniently colocated information you are seeking. What could be easier? Advanced Search Help The LII Advanced Search help page provides tips for using LII Advanced Search, plus information about LII search fields and other advanced search options. Understanding Search Results Understanding Search Results offers insight into our search results and tips for ing and printing LII items. Basic Search: Tips and Help. Librarians Internet Index. lii.org, Oct < LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 13

14 Remember to use fewer search terms to search a directory since you are not searching through the full text of the web pages in the directory, but rather only the titles, subject headings, and short descriptions the directory provides. Tip: The major difference between Librarians Internet Index and Google is: The more specific keywords you use in Google, the more focused your results. In LII, the more keywords you use, the less likely you are to get results. You must use fewer keywords and broader keywords to be successful in LII. In short, a subject directory is a catalog of sites collected and organized by humans. Directories are a good starting point, if your topic is included. Directories are also useful for finding information on a topic when you don't have an exact idea of what you need. Since they cover only a small fraction of the pages available on the web, they are more effective at finding general information on popular and scholarly subjects. If you are looking for something narrower and more specific, use a search engine. While LII is one of the best scholarly directories on the Web, others complement it, such as Infomine, Resource Discovery Network, and Internet Public Library. Librarians Internet Index shows many good search tools if you click More Search Tools at the top of the page. What makes some directories better than others? Three factors: (1) selectivity and quality, (2) subject organization, and (3) descriptions and ratings. Directories may also offer convenience features, advanced searching, and other options. But the real value of directories stems from the quality of their content and from enhanced access to this content through subject categorization and thoughtful descriptions of the pages included. Barker, Joe. PowerSearch.1 Distance Learning. Infopeople Project. U.S. Institute of Museum & Library Services, Library Services & Technology Act, California State Library: Mar Mar < LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 14

15 Other Types of Searching Specialized searches are a good search option. For instance, Google will search for other non-html files such as images, PowerPoint files (ppt), documents, and portable document format files (pdf). You may search for PowerPoint or PDF files by searching for your keyword and adding either +pdf or +ppt to your search terms, which will confine your results to documents in those file formats. One of Google s most popular features is the image database. Just type in your search term and click on the IMAGES button right above the search box to use this excellent service. The following list describes some of the other visual search sites: AltaVista General-purpose image searches Ditto Navigate the richness of the Web through visual images Google Image Search Comprehensive, 330 million images Lycos Multimedia Searches for pictures, audio or video files Conclusion We ve covered just a few of the many Internet search engines and subject directories, and how they work. We highlighted techniques on how you might research a topic using two of the basic search engines/directories. We pointed out worthwhile Internet tutorials. One final reminder: Remember to read the "help" or "tips" screens in the search engine you use to get a basic understanding of its peculiarities, so that your searches are more productive. You are now ready to do your Internet research exercise. LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 15

16 Tip: The Infopeople Project designed wonderful charts on using search engines, which you will find in the links for Unit 7 Part 1 on the Library Skills Web page. Librarians Internet Index < LPC Library Skills I: Unit 7 Part < 16