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searching Re
Internet Search Strategies 1. What am I looking for?
2. Where should I look?
3. How can I find what I’m looking for?
4. How do I know if what I find is credible?
5. How do I cite my sources?
Step 1: What Am I Looking For?
Broad or general information? Specific data or facts? Expert opinions? Alternative or Differing Perspectives?
Reduce lab time and frustration… Offline Search — Make a Plan
Before Online Search…Do Offline Search
What are the questions?What are the keywords?Develop the queriesChoose the resources
Searching is not the same as Researching
Step 2: Where Should I Look?
major search engines
.com Pro vs. Con
Metasearch engines
Pro vs. Con
Google’s other databases
Subject Directories Built by information specialists Selected, evaluated, annotated Organized into subject categories
Librarians’ Internet Index (lii.org) By a group of California library professionals
Infomine By UC consortium of library professionals
MEL Michigan Electronic Library
Pro vs. Con
Specialized Search Databases
Subscription Databases
InfoTrac Junior Edition http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/temp8
8056Home access password: temp_log
Other specialized collections: War & Terrorism, Religion
Pro vs. Con
What About Wikipedia? Wikipedia
How does it work? The criticism of Wikipedia When should it be used? How should it be used? How shouldn’t it be used?
Google’s Page Rank
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))
BEFORE you search:
“Crawls” pages on the public webCopies text & images, builds database
WHEN you search:Automatically ranks pages in your results Word occurrence and location on page Popularity - a link to a page is a vote for that page Over 200 factors applied to result of a search
Step 3: How Will I Find What I’m
Looking For?
Be Specific War of 1812 history vs. war of 1812 economic causes Word forced to appear on the page +keyword
+transportation +system +future(NO SPACE between + and the keyword)
Specify exact phrases “put the phrase in quotes”
“global warming” “Holocaust survivors”“World Trade Center”
Exclude a word -keyword (NO space between – and keyword)
+American +Poetry -sonnet
The asterisk is a wildcard *It will find alternate suffixes.
Organiz* would find:Organize, organizes, organization,
organizing, etc.
interview* would find:Interview, interviews, interviewing,
interviewer
Possible QueriesLebanon war
Lebanon civil war
Lebanon “civil war”
“Lebanese civil war” +causes
Then from there use strategies to pull from specific domains or specific file types, etc.
“Lebanese civil war” +causes site:gov
“Lebanese civil war” +causes site:edu
"lebanese civil war" +causes site:edu filetype:ppt
Understanding Domains What are the most reliable domains? Country codes
http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm
Examining the URL http://www.emich.edu/graduate/users/history/crimestat.html
Get Smart
Red Flags Look at the URL
~ , % , users, members, people, public, blog
Wordpress, blogspot, typepad, edublogs
Geocities, angelfire, lycos, yahoo, tripod, AOL
Narrow the Search
Website or domainsite:whitehouse.gov “global warming”site:edu “global warming”
File typefiletype:ppt site:edu “global warming”
Google advanced search page
Google Results Page
Missing Page? Use Cache
Related pages
On a result page:
Browser edit menu>find http://www.ghazi.de/civwar.html
Step 4: How Do I Know if the
Information is Credible?
CRITICAL EVALUATIONWhy Evaluate What You Find on the Web?
Anyone can put up a Web page about anything
Many pages not kept up-to-date
No quality control less trustworthy than scholarly publications no selection guidelines for search engines
Web Evaluation Techniques
Before you click to view the page...
Look at the URL - personal page or site?
~ , % , users, members, people, public, blog
Wordpress, blogspot, typepad, edublogs
Geocities, angelfire, lycos, yahoo, tripod, AOL
Domain name appropriate for the content? edu, com, org, net, gov, ca.us, uk, etc.
Published by an entity that makes sense ? News from its source?
www.nytimes.com Advice from valid agency?
www.nih.gov
Web Evaluation Techniques Scan the perimeter of the page
Can you tell who wrote it ? name of page author organization, institution, agency you recognize e-mail contact by itself not enough
Credentials for the subject matter ? Look for links to:
“About us” “Philosophy” “Background” “Biography”
Is it recent or current enough ? Look for “last updated” date - usually at bottom
If no links or other clues... truncate back the URL Modern poetry site
Web Evaluation Techniques
Indicators of quality
Sources documented links, footnotes, etc.
As detailed as you expect in print publications ?
do the links work ?
Information retyped or forged why not a link to published version instead ?
Links to other resources biased, slanted ?
Web Evaluation Techniques
Do Some Detective Work
Search the URL in alexa.com Who links to the site? Who owns the domain?
Type or paste the URL into the basic search box
Traffic for top 100,000 sites
See what links are in Google’s Similar pages
Look up the page author in Google
http://whois.domaintools.com liberty05.com
What did the site look like in the past?
www.archive.org
Web Evaluation Techniques
STEP BACK & ASK: Does it all add up ? Why was the page put on the Web ?
inform with facts and data? explain, persuade? sell, entice?
share, disclose? as a parody or satire?
Is it appropriate for your purpose?
Cross Referencing Triangulation—(3 angles)
3 DIFFERENT sources that agree on the same fact or data
Why?
Step 5: How Do I Site My Sources?
Cite it Son of Citation Machine Knightsite Open a word processor
Copy and paste citation generated from Citation Machine
.5” indent of second line of each citation for MLA (and every line after within that source)
Warlick, David. "Stop The Madness." Landmark Project. June 15, 2007. Technology in Learning. 25 Sep 2007 <http://elearning.org/article/2007/expertart07.html>.
