Searching technique

for online databases and internet

Dr. Hesamaddin Kamal Zadeh2013

Using the right keywords

Step One: Identify a Topic.

Step Two: Test Your Topic.

If you are finding too much information and too many sources, narrow your topic by

using the and operator

Finding too little information may indicate that you need to broaden your topic.

Example: What are the effects of Global Warming on agriculture?

Keywords: global warming, effects, agriculture.

Using the right keywords

Using the right keywords

Phrase Searching

When using search terms containing more than one word, enclosing them in quotation marks, returns documents containing the exact phrase only.

An example: When searching for information on gun control legislation, using "gun control" eliminates documents that contain the words gun and control, but not in that order; possibly in entirely different paragraphs and maybe not even relating to the topic of gun control

Truncation

If you want to broaden your search, use a root part of the word and abbreviate it with an asterisk (Manag*).

The engine will return links to documents containing Manager, Management, Managing, and so on.

You can combine truncated terms with other words using Boolean Operators.

Example: employ* AND education will retrieve records which include the various forms of employ and the word education.

Boolean Operators

Define the relationships between words or groups of words.

The Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT

AND, OR, NOT

AND

Use the capitalized word AND between keywords. The engine will only find documents that have both words.

Example – Search Manager AND Behavior would return all documents that contain both words.

Be sure to capitalize all letters in the word AND, otherwise the search engine will treat it as a keyword, not as an operator.

AND

Manager Behavior

OR

If you want to broaden your search.

This is very useful when searching for terms that have synonyms.

An example is children OR kids

OR

Children Kids

NOT

NOT is used to exclude a particular word or combination of words from your search results.

If you are retrieving many records that are unrelated to your topic, try using the NOT operator to eliminate a word.

NOT

Behavior Attitude

WILD CARDS

A "wild card" takes the place of letters within a word and is an important way of catching variant spellings.

For example, the American spelling is behavior, the British spelling is behaviour.

To retrieve both spellings: a question mark (?) or an asterisk (*) behavio*r

Behavio?r

NESTING

Use parentheses to clarify relationships between search terms.

Example: (television OR mass media) AND women

This search looks for both "television and women" and "mass media and women."

Search Engines

Database

THANK YOU!