There is a lot of information out there on the World Wide Web. This blog will help you make sense of it.
Ten Searching Tips:
Boolean:
The World Wide Web is a big place so finding information in a time-efficient manner using a search engine is in order. Limiting your searches to include and exclude key words, otherwise known as Boolean searches, could be a good first step. There are three simple “rules” to remember. When the “ALL” operator is used, the search engine or database looks for all terms on a page. Use the “OR” function if you want any of your terms to appear in the results. Type “NONE” if you want to exclude all of the search terms from the results.
Proximity:
Think of location. A Proximity Search looks for documents with search terms near each other. You can use a proximity search to find two or more words or letters within a specific number of each other. For example, using the Near Operator, (N3) finds the search terms within three words of each other–the word order does not matter. On the other hand, the within operator looks for words within a certain number of one another.
Domain Searching:
Domain names are simply the letters after the period in a Web site address. Keep in mind that some domain names are more credible than others. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority assigns domains for countries (for example, .ca for Canada) and in generic cases, government (.gov ), military (.mil) and educational institutions (.edu). One final point. Please be careful when reviewing documents from domains using .us and .com, since they are open to registration by any individual or organization. A simple search at Whois Source can reveal information on the site and its owners.
Verifying Web content/Evaluating Information:
The journalism saying is true. “If your mother says she loves you, then check it out.” With the vast amounts of information available online, deciding the quality of information does take some time. And that means fact checking the information by searching through some journals found on a library system’s database list if available. Ask yourself, “Does source provide a balanced viewpoint?” “Is the author credible?” Examine the credentials. Has the author’s articles appeared in other seemingly credible publications or sites? Examine the organization’s Web site to determine its credibility by utilizing a domain ownership search on Whois Source.
Image Searches:
The Web is filled with engines that can search for images but there are few things to keep in mind. First, images can usually be found in two formats: JPEG (.jpg) and GIF (.gif) and knowing what to look for can narrow your search. JPEG files are commonly used for photographs requiring a vast color palette. GIFs are commonly used in graphics and use 256 colors, a number insufficient for color photographs. Second, image search engines offered by AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com/image) and Corbis (http://pro.corbis.com) allow to a user to perform simple searches by checking for size, color and file type.
Sound Searches:
I would venture a guess and say when one thinks of Web-based audio files, then MP3, the popular music file format, would come to mind. But the Web offers so much more. One trick to remember is that the more widely-searched engines–Ask.com and Yahoo!–do not offer audio files in their respective searchable indexes. No matter. Most audio files online are WAV files, the standard Windows audio format, so try searching for the keyword with “wav.” Real Audio (RA) is a popular choice for streaming media–video or audio that can play almost immediately.
Database Searches:
Search engines are great for providing facts and as a starting point for your research. But the information is organized in an unstructured fashion and a general search term could yield an extensive amount of hits. Searching for information through a database offers you specific centralized information freeing you from dealing all of those results. For example, Expanded Academic ASAP offers abstracts and articles from more than 1,500 scholarly and trade journals and publications. Databases also offer information from reputable sources monitored by professionals and offer the articles as abstracts or in full-text.
Date Searches:
Using a date-restricted query can offer some stumbling blocks since the user is actually sorting through the search engine indexed Web page in question instead of the page’s birth date. Hypertext Markup Language offer no codes to distinguish a page’s publication date and search engines mostly ignore the copyright meta tag. Your best bet would be to research most search engines and databases using filters and employing advance searches discussed in previous Entries in a specific date range.
Public Records:
For starters, you need to determine whether the information you seek is public or private. Government records such as court records, liens and judgments, bankruptcies and intellectual property filings are public records. To complete a successful public record search, you’ll need to search more than just online databases since 65 percent of public information is inaccessible online. You’ll may need to visit a courthouse. Information such as birth dates and financial data is private, but may be legally revealed in a public documents such as bankruptcy (private contact information and bank account numbers) and vehicle accident reports (driver’s license numbers and vehicle identification numbers). For additional guidance on everything from finding free databases to understanding the myriad of legal issues regarding public searches, visit BRB Publications.
Using Unique Language:
If your search results are too general, then it’s time to add some specialized words to your query. Try to search for some basic information to learn words related to your topic. The idea is to identity synonyms, homonyms and equivalent words and the process may reveal new sources of information and beneficial search terms.As part of your research, plug some terms into a search engine that offers related search suggestions like Yahoo! and an expand search function at Ask.com.
Five Search Tools for Journalists
The Librarians’ Index to the Internet (academic)
This search engine proudly proclaims it offers “Websites You Can Trust”–-which is a good thing for journalists seeking information online. The publicly-funded Web site offers more than 20,000 entries maintained by librarians and 14 main topics (and 300 related topics) in fields that range from food and cooking to history to public health and safety. The librarians working on the Web site review hundreds of Web sites daily and perform an admirable job in keeping the number of defunct sites to a minimum. The Librarians Index does cater to those seeking facts and it offers sources mostly from the United States. Advance search techniques (proximity and boolean) work and you can subscribe to an e-mail newsletter chocked full of diverse Web links.
Topix.net
This is one of the many wonderful search engines that indexes only news articles freeing you from conducting expansive searches. Topix.net creates a folder for a particular subject, and the developers boast of having more than 360,000 topics drawing from more than 10,000 sources each day. Topix.net handles searching through a single keyword or phrase and allows for zip codes, city and location searches. One feature unique compared to some of the other news-only engines is the Topix.net interactive graph showing how often your subject appeared in news reports. The site’s only negative is the “busy” homepage requiring some scrolling to digest the contents.
LexisNexis Academic
The LexisNexis Academic database operators refer to their product as the “largest news and business online information service.” LexisNexis Academic offers full-text access to news, business, medical and other groups of information. The advance-search function displays results found the headline, the lede, captions or the full-body text. When submitting your query, do not use the common wildcards (* and !) to truncate word endings. Try an exclamation mark instead (Olympi! will find Olympic, Olympian and Olympics).
This database follows a simple design in the line of “what you see is what you get.” Unlike other search-based tools like Yahoo! and Excite, there are no visual distractions to steer you away from plugging the information into the search fields.
Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collection
This resource has been built by librarians at some of the nation’s top libraries including Wake Forest University and the University of California. The collection contains resources that include but are not limited to databases, electronic journals, mailing lists and a litany of other information sources. The resource also does well in providing a comprehensive list of subjects that range from math to biotechnology to cultural diversity. Infomine presents the search results with title, subject, author, keyword and description and a handful of Web pages with rich text. The advance search features are strong since the user can search from six commercial search engines, limit results by record origin and utilize boolean and proximity operators.
Clusty
Clusty utilizes meta-searching to organize the search results into folders (or clusters) holding similar items together on one page. In the result list, the search tool organizes the clusters in an hierarchical format and allows the site visitor to view the sub-clusters. The search function is easy to use and caters to those who are not familiar with the tenants of advance searching. For example, the advance search offers more control by restricting the results by host (myspace.com and .gov sites for example) and file type (PDF and PowerPoint formats). Clusty also supports all standard search functions and each underlying search engine will translate your query into its corresponding syntax.
Five Categories of Special Search Tools
Fact Checking
Statistics
- U.S. Census Bureau
- The Virtual Chase–Statistical Resources
- National Center for Charitable Statistics
