Knowledge Services GroupInformation Search Tips and Tools

Types of Search

Quick and Dirty

Advanced

Knowledge Services Group

Types of Search

Quick and Dirty

Advanced

Knowledge Services Group

I need some craft supplies

I need supplies for spinning and weaving

(58 million hits)

(368 thousand hits)

Types of Search Source

E S o i n r I a D G s d

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An example of the way things are ‘organised’ and ‘structured’ on the internet

An example of the way things are ‘organised’ and ‘structured’ in a human-created and managed information source like a database

Organised

Truncation

Uses the ‘root’ of a word/term to search for all related words/terms with that root

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friend

befriend

friendly

friendship

friendless

girlfriend

boyfriend unfriendlyfriends

friendliness

Wildcards

* % ! $ + ? #

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Not a sweary word, just a few examples of the characters often used as wildcards in information searching

$friend retrieves befriend, boyfriend, girlfriend, unfriendly

Boolean Operators

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AND

OR

NOT

Narrows a search : fewer results

Widens a search : more results

Excludes certain items : fewer results

Search strategy??

The AND Operator

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Plumbing Rods

Plumbing AND Rods

Everything plumbing All kinds of rods

The OR Operator

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Colour ColorOR

British items containing the word ‘colour’

American items containing the word ‘color’

The NOT Operator

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Trousers

NOT black

Filters or Limits

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Search results

Filter

Filtered search results

Knowledge Services GroupInformation Search Tips and Tools

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