Image
and Media Searching(Remember to be
careful about copyright, especially when publishing on the Web! Ask for permission
to use and cite any image that is not public domain.
Like mailing lists or listservs, usenet
groups are generally devoted to a specific interest. But unlike
mailing lists, which automatically send email to your address,
usenet group postings are accessed by visiting a Web browser. You
still need to subscribe to post and view mailings. Each time you
visit you are first presented with postings which arrived since your
last visit. The major advantage to usenet groups is that they allow
you to sort through a wide variety of postings without having
cluttered your mailbox. Among the disadvantages to usenet groups are
that the discussion seems to be a bit spottier and the quality of
posts vary more than with mailing lists.
Search
Strategies (Remember, when you leave
Google, these strategies matter!)
It is important to recognize the
difference between a subject and keyword search. Generally use
keyword when you are combining multiple concepts or words.
If you are not happy with your results,
try another search tool; check your spelling; or try synonyms or
related, broader or narrower terms. By all means, use some strategy.
Though they have many quirks, most engines allow users the following
advanced techniques.
Search Strategy
Explanation
Examples
Boolean
operators
AND limits your search,
requiring that both or all word appear
OR is used to capture synonyms or
related words
NOT eliminates possibilities that
you suspect will cause problems
(Some search engines use + and —
for AND and NOT
Several search engines, like
Google, assume an and between words.
Vietnam AND protest AND
students
Japan AND cooking
car OR automobile
coronary OR heart
Martin Luther NOT King
China NOT dishes
Wildcards
An asterisk (*) or a
questionmark (?) may be used to stand for any character or
string of characters.
teen* (picks up
teenage, teenagers, or
teens)
Herz? (for Herzegovina)
wom?n (for woman or
women)
Natural language
searches
Some search engines
allow you to type in questions as you would think or speak
them.
Why is the sky
blue?
Phrases
You often will want
words to appear together in specific order. Commonly,
quotation marks ("") set words off as phrases to be searched
as a whole. (Some search engines use parentheses, commas, or
hyphens instead of quotation marks.)
"vitamin A"
"bed and breakfast"
"George Washington
Carver"
Proximity
Words often are not
meaningful in your search unless they appear near each other
in a document. In large documents, words separated by lots of
text are generally unrelated. ADJ specifies that two words
appear next to each other. NEAR/25 specifies that two words
appear within 25 words of each other.
global ADJ warming
Eric Clapton NEAR/10
Cream
Field searching
This feature restricts
searches to certain portions of Web documents. It allows you
to specify that the search words appear in the title, URL, or
first paragraph.
title: cancer
URL: epa
Case
sensitivity
Most search engines are
case insensitive by default. However, there are some that
recognize uppercase and lowercase variations.
Baker (retrieves name and
eliminates reference to cake and bread makers)
AIDS (eliminates reference to
helpers)
China (eliminates references to
dishes)
From Power Tools: 100+ Essential Forms
and Presentations for Your School Library Information Program by
Joyce Kasman Valenza. Copyright 1998 American Library Association.
Used by permission of ALA Editions. Reproduction for nonprofit
educational purposes permitted.
