MED7126 Data and Multimedia Journalism Paul Bradshaw
Getting the data Advanced search tips
Don’t ask for what you want: describe what you expect to find
Search operators
What text will it contain? Where will that text be? What text will it not contain?
Imagine the data: text
Specific references, not general:
Specify a constituency… …a school
…an institution code …an invoice number …a piece of jargon
quotes: “disclosure log” asterisk “between * and 2014”
minus “hate crime” -religion -"publication scheme"
Number ranges: 2000..2014
‘life expectancy Birmingham’
"life expectancy" "perry barr"
inurl:
inurl:foi inurl:ccg
inurl:intranet inurl:search.asp inurl:search.php
intitle: allintitle:
intitle:foi allintitle:disclosure log
intitle:“bank fines”
intext: allintext:
intext:“miserable failure” allintext:miserable failure
"life expectancy" "perry barr"
"life expectancy" "perry barr" filetype:xls
"life expectancy" "perry barr" filetype:xls site:ons.gov.uk
"life expectancy" "perry barr" filetype:xls site:ons.gov.uk 2009..2014
"life expectancy" "perry barr" filetype:xls site:ons.gov.uk 2009..2014 -winter
Where is it likely to be What format? When was it not published?
Imagine the data: meta data
site:
site:gov.uk site:nhs.uk
site:police.uk site:ac.uk site:org.uk
site:org site:birmingham.gov.uk site:met.police.uk/foi/
disclosure
filetype:
filetype:xls filetype:xlsx filetype:pdf filetype:csv filetype:ppt filetype:doc
filetype:docx filetype:xml
search tools
“disclosure log” site:gov.uk allintitle:hate crime report filetype:pdf site:police.uk art inurl:search.asp -library
Combine operators:
research.google.com
zanran.com
Some sites use the robots.txt protocol to tell search engines not to index Use DownThemAll to download the site and search it locally
Sites that aren’t indexed
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Do it now: Search for a piece of jargon in your field, on a particular type of site Search for spreadsheets or PDFs mentioning an individual in your field
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Links: Pinboard.in/u:paulbradshaw/t:data+searchengine
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