Week 3 of Intro to Info Services at FSU SLIS on web searching & evaluation

1. “Web Searching & Evaluation”
LIS 5603, Intro to Information Services
Dr. Lorri Mon
College of Communication & Information

2. Evaluating Sources
Last week, we searched for sources to
answer the question. We found 12
sources.
Suppose you have to pick three of these
to use in an answer – which three would
you choose?
See our 12 sources here:
http://fsuinfoservices.wordpress.com/questions/

3. Results – an exercise in Evaluation
• What three sources does our class
choose, and why?

4. Answers
The IPL2 answer :
http://2011.ispace.ci.fsu.edu/~lmon/wk3-leonardoanswer.txt
Issues/Rationale:
• What sources did Dr. Mon end up choosing to
answer this question, and why?
• What did the final answer look like in IPL2
format, and any notable issues there?

5. Universal Leonardo in Google Search Results

6. Cognitive Authority
Patrick Wilson writes that “beyond our own
direct experience, all we know of the world is
hearsay.” How do we decide which hearsay
to trust – which has “cognitive authority”?
Credibility, competence,
trustworthiness, reputation, intrinsic
plausibility, believability/appearance
Wilson, Patrick (1983), “Cognitive Authority” in Second-Hand
Knowledge : an Inquiry into Cognitive Authority. Westport, Conn. :
Greenwood Press, 13-37.

7. Try this Google Search:
“Martin Luther King Jr”

8. Investigating a Site
“About” page / “Contact” page of the site
Whois – site owner information
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
Alexa – rankings, traffic and users
http://www.alexa.com/

9. Questions in Resource Evaluation
• Who is the audience? • When is it updated?
• What is the purpose? • What does it cover?
• Who is the creator? • How is it used?
• How is it organized? • What makes it unique?
AND
• Why choose this resource, as opposed to others?
CONSIDERATIONS:
Coverage, Currency, Accuracy, Authority, Appropriateness,
Perspective, Presentation/Design, Usability, Cost

10. Favorite Search Engines?
What search engine do you most often use?

11. Try this Google search:
1 cup in teaspoons

12. Here’s another Google Search to try:
related:www.libraryjournal.com

13. Google Search Tricks #3
What’s Happening Here?
Try this Google search:
~digital "reference librarian"
(tilde in front of digital)

14. Google Search Tricks #4
What’s Happening Here?
Try this Google search:
Chocolate * * cake
Or if you prefer pie –
Peach * * pie

15. Google Search Tricks #5
Other “Wild Card” Google Searches
Salami has * calories
Denver has * population
Take a number or fact in a
question and search it as a
statement with the * in place
of the missing information.

16. Bing Search #1
What’s Happening Here
Try searching this with the Bing
search engine at
http://www.bing.com/
who got what when

17. Internet Search Basics
• Search engine ‘spiders’ index Web pages &
create an inverted file (words & frequencies;
stop words)
Cow appears : 2x in doc1, 1x in doc2, 1 in doc3
• Inverted file is searched, matches ranked and
returned (e.g. “cow” in urls, titles, link text,
anchor links, page text)
Retrieval ranking influences:
Cow is in URL of doc1, is 2x in text, 3 links to it
use word “cow” as external link, and “cow” is an
anchor link from top of page to lower paragraph

18. Boolean Searching
+ AND digital AND reference (has both)
| OR e-mail OR chat (has either)
- NOT spice NOT girls (omits one)
(mime | pantomime) +history -wiki
Phrase searching with Boolean:
“digital reference” OR “virtual reference” NOT wiki
“digital reference” | “virtual reference” –wiki

19. http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm

20. Exploring Search Tools

21. Subject/Specialty Searching
KidRex(Kids) Age appropriate
http://www.kidrex.org/
USA.GOV (Govt) Authoritative
http://www.usa.gov
Scirus (Science) Subject Focused
http://www.scirus.com
Internet Archive Historic (and “deep web”)
http://www.archive.org
Dmoz Open Directory
Browsing
http://dmoz.org
Search Engine Relationships Chart – Bruce Clay Inc.
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf

22. Dr. Mon’s Favorite Techniques
1. Concept analysis. What words and phrases might be in
a perfect site? Search, click on resulting pages, use
words/phrases from those pages to run new searches.
2. Limiting the domain. On Google, site:.gov limits to
only government sites. You could do site:.edu or
-site:.com for searches limiting results to education
sites, or eliminating commercial sites.
3. Phrase searching plus keywords. A lot of sites may
have the three keywords: sms text reference but fewer
will have the exact phrase: “sms text reference”
Adding other keywords to that phrase narrows it even
further: “sms text reference” libraries users

23. And…my biggest secret
I just read the instructions.
You can read them too. Look
for:
“Help”
“Advanced Search”
“About”
blogs, usergroups, support
forums

24. IPL Refadmin Ethics
(What’s your call on these issues?)
Here are some examples of real questions to the IPL
that pose ethical issues:
1. a 5th grader who wants to know how to "clean the
internet access record"
2. a man in China who wants help in getting around
government-imposed Internet access restrictions
3. a teenager who wants referrals to Internet pay-per-
access providers which can be paid in advance by
check so that parents won't know
4. someone who wants to know how to download
illegal software ("warez" and "crackz")
Do you think these questions should have been
answered, or turned away? How would you handle
these questions?

25. Next Week: Indexes & Databases
• Question Set – will be available on Friday
9/14 (each question to be answered with web,
index/databases, and book/bibliographic
sources) Due on Mon, October 8, 2012
• Don’t rush into submitting it – we will cover
index/database sources and book/bibliographic
sources for the next two weeks, and you will be
expected to use sources & techniques we learn
in those classes.
• Research Guide topic – e-mail brief description
of your Research Guide topic, due Mon, Sept 17