Comic by Bill Watterson

Library Research

0What do I want to know?

0 Define an information need and develop a strategy

0How do I find it?

0 Know where to look

0 Implement search strategy

0How do I know it’s right for me?

0 Evaluate information before you use it

Define an Information Need

0Review your assignment

0 How many sources? What type(s)? What is the audience? What is the intended purpose

0Brainstorm ideas

0 Talk to friends; browse web; read newspaper

0 Identify main topic and related concepts

0 Use a thesaurus; break down by subtopic

0Put it all together

0 Develop a search strategy

Identifying Keywords

0Take your topic and make it a question…

0Now in that question identify the significant terms in your question.

0These terms are the keywords you will use to search for sources.

Search TermsConcept 1

AND

Concept 2

AND

Concept 3

Main idea Related idea Subtopic

OR OR OR

Synonym Synonym Synonym

OR OR OR

Synonym Synonym Synonym

• Use “ “ or ( ) to keep words together & in order• Connect different concepts with AND• Connect similar concepts with OR

Boolean Operators

0AND = narrow

0OR = expand

0NOT = exclude

AND is automatically used by Google and other search engines to combine terms

Sometimes a program will use a + or – to substitute for AND or NOT

Tips and Tricks forBetter Searching

0 Don’t type in your question:0 Use Boolean Operators

with keywords

0 Use keyword phrases with “” or ()

0 Wildcard (? or #)0 ne?t finds

neat, nest, next

0 colo#r finds color or colour

0 Truncation (*)0 comput* finds computer

or computing

0 Proximity0 N= near regardless of

order0 tax N5 reform finds tax

reform as well as reform of income tax

0 W= in the order they were entered0 tax W8 reform finds tax

reform but not reform of income tax

Finding Articles

0Use GALILEO to access databases

0Use your SWAN credentials to log into Galileo from off campus

GALILEO Link

1. Type in Keywords in the boxes… Notice the operators

2. Limitersa) Full textb) Scholarlyc) Date

0 “Quotes” – returns Exact results of the search term

0 Especially good for stop words or words that are ignored like “a, an, the”

0Operators

0 AND – results contain all search terms

0 OR – results contain either search terms

0Google Scholar

0 http://scholar.google.com/

Google Searching within Queries

0 site: results from only a specific site

0 site:edu

0 site: harvard.edu

0 filetype: results in only the filetype specified

0 filetype:ppt|pdf|doc

0 intitle: results from terms only in the title

0 intitle:Clayton

Symbols in Google

0 + disables synonym searching

0 - excludes a word

0~ requests synonym searching

0 | works like an OR operator

0 * wildcard terms (fills in the blank)

0# … # range of things like dates, prices, and measurements

Google Image Searching

0 Creative Commons = Copyright free

0 search.creativecommons.org

0 Search by image category

0Use the color chips to find images by color

0Drag your image into the search box

0 Camera icon plus image URL or upload