Skills for Online Searching - ipl2 A+ Research & Writing Learn how search syntax works Search syntax is a set of rules describing how users can query the database being searched. Sophisticated syntax makes for a better search, one where the items retrieved are mostly relevant to the searcher's need and important items are not missed. It allows a user to look for combinations of terms, exclude other terms, look for various forms of a word, include synonyms, search for phrases rather than single words. Boolean logic Boolean logic allows the use of AND, OR and NOT to search for items containing both terms, either term, or a term only if not accompanied by another term. Wildcards and truncation This involves substituting symbols for certain letters of a word so that the search engine will retrieve items with any letter in that spot in the word. Phrase searching Many concepts are represented by a phrase rather than a single word. Proximity Capitalization Field searching All database records are divided up into fields. Index and abstract of a document
Search Tools - Enterprise Search Engines - Information, Guides and News Researched Papers Integrating Good Sources Live Training – Search Education – Google With these webinars, you can improve your own search skills and learn how to bring search literacy to your school. Browse the archive of past trainings, and make sure to follow us on Google+ to stay up to speed on the latest tips and trainings from Google. Even better search results: Getting to know Google search for education Google makes it simple to find the information you need, but there are strategies for finding higher quality sources even more easily. Power searching: Advanced Google search for education When you realize that the information you want will be a presentation or PDF, what can you do? Beyond the First Five Links Looking for new ways to motivate students to look beyond the first five links in a search engine? Modern search literacy: Leveraging literacies to get the most from popular tools Once you've run your search, how do you interpret your results for the highest impact? Sensemaking: Organizing information to gain better understanding Writing Successful Queries Pt.
Search Strategies Search with Peripheral Vision The Five-Step Search Strategy We Recommend Don't assume you know what you want to find. Look at search results and see what you might use in addition to what you've thought of. Switch from search engines to directories and back. Search Strategies: Search with Peripheral Vision Copyright © 2012 The Regents of the University of California is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at
The Inquiry Page Based on John Dewey's philosophy that education begins with the curiosity of the learner, we use a spiral path of inquiry: asking questions, investigating solutions, creating new knowledge as we gather information, discussing our discoveries and experiences, and reflecting on our new-found knowledge. Each step in this process naturally leads to the next: inspiring new questions, investigations, and opportunities for authentic "teachable moments." businessinsider Google is not perfect Perhaps I am starting to suffer from “deformation professionelle”, but I am constantly surprised by how often I am still asked “Why do we need classification now we have free text search and Google?”. This post is designed to answer the question. If you are an info pro, it won’t tell you anything you don’t already know, but as always I’d appreciate suggestions and additions. The question seems to me a bit like asking “Why do we need scalpels now we have invented scissors?”. Scissors are a brilliant invention and they do many wonderful things – just like Google – they make all sorts of cutting quick and easy, but there are also many situations when they are not the right tool for the job. I don’t want a surgeon cutting me open with scissors except in a real emergency. Google is excellent when searching text for something specific and known – pdf of a tube map of London, “Ode to Autumn by John Keats”; documents that contain the phrase “small furry creatures from alpha centauri”.
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: A Stand Against Wikipedia As Wikipedia has become more and more popular with students, some professors have become increasingly concerned about the online, reader-produced encyclopedia. While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it, the history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand. It voted this month to bar students from citing the Web site as a source in papers or other academic work. All faculty members will be telling students about the policy and explaining why material on Wikipedia -- while convenient -- may not be trustworthy. "As educators, we are in the business of reducing the dissemination of misinformation," said Don Wyatt, chair of the department. There was some discussion in the department of trying to ban students from using Wikipedia, but Wyatt said that didn't seem appropriate. "I understand what their concerns are.
Deep Web Research 2012 Bots, Blogs and News Aggregators ( is a keynote presentation that I have been delivering over the last several years, and much of my information comes from the extensive research that I have completed over the years into the "invisible" or what I like to call the "deep" web. The Deep Web covers somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion plus pages of information located through the world wide web in various files and formats that the current search engines on the Internet either cannot find or have difficulty accessing. The current search engines find hundreds of billions of pages at the present time of this writing. In the last several years, some of the more comprehensive search engines have written algorithms to search the deeper portions of the world wide web by attempting to find files such as .pdf, .doc, .xls, ppt, .ps. and others. This Deep Web Research 2012 report and guide is divided into the following sections: Bot Research