American InterContinental University

Cindy Broyles

THE IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCHING EFFECTIVELY

EFFECTIVE SEARCHING

²  Research that comes from just any resource can be questionable. ²  By using techniques that ensure that the information that is being used is correct and not ambiguous. ²  With search engines containing billions of resources from websites, journals, news feeds, blogs, and other online information centers. How is it that a researcher can ensure their information is correct and of good quality?

Punjab University, n.d.

EFFECTIVE SEARCHING

²  Boolean operators ²  Phrase and proximity searching ²  Adjacent words ADJ ²  Stop words

Search engines work by taking your input and using tools within them to find what you want.

Punjab University, n.d.

EFFECTIVE SEARCHING

Searching with Boolean basics tools.

²  The quotation mark “w” ²  Common Words or the ignored ²  Excluding words –word ²  OR allows more then one term dog OR cat ²  AND allows both searches dog AND cat

Searching with Boolean advanced tools.

²  AND NOT dog AND NOT cat will remove any search were cat appears even if dog is mentioned

²  NEAR dog NEAR cat requires both terms to be present and can possibly be limited depending on the search engine to a set number of words apart.

²  ( ) requires that words in the ( ) be searched first and can be added to by (one) AND (two) making it required that both words be present

Baker, n.d.

EFFECTIVE SEARCHING

University of Nottingham, Ningbo China, n.d.

Understand how Phrases and Proximity searches work

²  The Phrase looks for commonly placed words such as ²  Heavy weight boxing or Horse Racing

²  Proximity looks for words that are near each other

²  By searching seasonal AND weather these terms will appear near each other .

²  Adjacent wording (ADJ) can be limited by adding a number after it. ²  Place ADJ in weather ADJ season and the search will look for

²  seasonal weather or weather seasonal ²  Add a number after ADJ to increase space or decrease the space

information found has between the two words ²  Seasonal ADJ5 Weather and you might get “Oregon beach goers

look for seasonal storms and nice weather before going beach combing.”

EFFECTIVE SEARCHING

Manning, Raghaven, Schütze, 2009

Stop Words

These words are so common that they are excluded from search engines as being irrelevant to finding the information Manning, Raghaven, Schütze (2009) list 25 of these stop words as

a an and are as

at be by for from

has he in is it

its of on that the

to was were will with

USE OF PRIMARY SOURCES

² When researching a topic the orignial source recorded from direct study gives a first hand account of the topic that has not been diluted by any other source through paraphrasing or alteration. This is why these resources are so valuable.

² Giving the author and publisher credit ensures that these first hand resources are varifiable and easy to return to should more study me needed.

Library of Congress, n.d.

² Websites may contain bias ² Be false information ² Sources may be misquoted ² Ensure the quality of information

THE IMPORTANCE OF VERIFYING SOURCES

Perdue OWL, 2013

THE IMPORTANCE OF VERIFYING RESOURCES

Georgetown University, 2014

Are all the results true?

The answer to this is no. Some resources contain fact that has been clouded by bias, or may even be completely false information. By review the site and asking these few questions a better chance at understanding the credibility of a site.

Author Purpose Objective

Accuracy Reliability Currency

Links

While researching a multitude of information is found, it is easy for a researcher to loos a website that had quality information on their topic. Keeping track of the websites can be done in a variety of ways. ²  Online website tracker ²  RSS Feed for websites that are RSS capable ²  Bookmarking sites ²  Create a document that contains the author title and link ²  A hand written ledger of sites ²  Keeping a running citation list ²  The web browsing history is also an option but may take a lot of time to

search through to find that one special site if the researcher remembers the name of that site.

STRATEGIES FOR KEEPING TRACK OF FLUID SOURCES ON THE WEB

Georgetown University, 2014

STRATEGIES FOR KEEPING TRACK OF FLUID SOURCES ON THE WEB

Some RSS and Site tracking tools are

•  Feedspot • Bloglines • NewsGator •  Pluck • My Yahoo •  iGoogle • Weave • Diggo • Xmarks

References

Baker, J. (n.d.) Basic search tips and advanced Boolean explained. University of California, Berkeley retrieved from http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Boolean.pdf

Manning, C. D., Raghaven, P, Schütze, H. (2009). Introduction to information retrieval. Cambridge University Press, England retrieved from http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/pdf/irbookonlinereading.pdf

No Author (n.d.). Effective searching strategies and techniques. Getting the most from electronic information resources. Punjab University Library retrieved from http://library.pu.edu.pk/DL/Effective_searching_techniques.pdf.

No Author (n.d.). Advanced search skills introduction to phrase searching. University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China retrieved from http://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/is/study-skills/research/advanced-search-skills/phrase-proximity.aspx

No Author (June, 2012). Using Boolean operators. Dick Smith Library, Tarleton State University retrieved from http://www.tarleton.edu/departments/library/tutorials/search_tips/search_tips3.html No Author (2014). Evaluating internet resources. Georgetown University Library, Washington DC, retrieved from http://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/evaluating-internet-content No Author (February, 2013). Evaluating sources of information. Perdue University retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/553/1/ No Author (2014). About RSS feed. Mishcon de Reya New York LLP retrieved from. http://www.mishconnewyork.com/siteinformation/about_rss

REFERENCES