This presentation deals with effective online search strategies which uses keywords for making the search more easy.

1. Keyword searching

2. HOW TO FIND ONLINE
INFORMATION
 Guessing the URL
 Using a search engine
 Using a web dictionary, subject gateway

3. SEARCH ENGINE
 A search engine is a searchable database of Internet files collected by a
computer program (called a crawler, robot, worm, spider).
Large
amount
of
material
Huge
databas
Emphasis
quantity
over
quality
Databases
are
updated at
a variable
rate

4. Subject Directory
 A subject directory is a service that offers a collection of links to Internet
resources submitted by site creators or evaluators and organized into subject
categories. Organize
d
hierarchi
cally
Subject
and links
meet each
other very
well
Smaller
databases
Quality
over
quantity
Maintained
by editors
(yahoo)
Mostly
searchable

5. Effective online search strategies
KEYWORD
SEARCHING
Boolean
searching
Phrase
searching
Truncatio
n
Wildcard
Field
Searching
Setting
Limits

6. Boolean Searching
violence AND
television
AND
is used to narrow a search.
This will retrieve records that
have both keywords.
college OR
university
sports NOT
professional
OR
is used to expand a search. This
will retrieve records that have
either keyword. It’s useful for
synonyms.
NOT
is used to narrow a search. This
will not retrieve records that have
the unwanted keyword.

7. Restriction/stemming (e.g. “search
term”)
 Double quotation marks
 Some databases use single quotes
restrict a search
to that exact
word or phrase
SEARCH TERM RESULTS
draw Drawn, withdrawn,
drawing
“draw” draw

8. Field codes (e.g. au, ti, su, etc)
 Databases will have their field codes available in a pull-down menu to one
side of the main search field box.
 Field codes can often be used
 shorten search time
 yield more relevant results
 Interested in primary research papers that deal with our topic
• search keywords in the title (ti:) field
 Searching for papers written by a particular author
• combine the authors name in the au: field with another keyword in the
title or subject (su:) field to eliminate papers by other researchers who
have the same last name and initials.
Ti: title
Su: subject
field
Au: author
field

9. STOPWORDS
(e.g. a, an, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, from, had, have, he, her, his, if, into, is, it, no,
on, such, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, which, will, with, you)
 Most databases will not recognize because they appear with such
frequency in text and will not affect a search.
 The words and, or, not, however, are recognized by most databases
as Boolean operators.
 Fire and climatic change in temperate ecosystems of the
western Americas
 “and” = recognized as a Boolean operator
Results: individual words in the title: fire, climatic, change, temperate,
ecosystems, western, Americas.
 To avoid this, place the entire title in double quotation marks and
specify a title search by using either a pull-down menu or a field
code.

10. Truncation (e.g. *, #)
 Used to find various forms of a word
Cat*
category
catatoniccatalog
Bird*
birds
birdingbirdman

11. Wildcards (usually the question mark ?)
 Used in the middle of words to indicate a missing or non-existent
letter
 This can help get to results even if the word entered in the database
has been misspelled or spelled alternatively
M?cDonald
McDonald
(non-existent
letter)
MacDonald
(missing letter) dependant
depend?nt
dependent

12. Plurals (e.g. &, +)
 Special form of truncation
 Adding ampersand (&) or plus (+) symbol to the end of a word
sky&
skies
sky
Ys
F V
Is
Database will
automatically convert

13. Proximity (e.g. with, near)
 Not every database offers this kind of searching.
 Many databases classify these words as stopwords.
Search entry Results
bronchitis with pollution both bronchitis and pollution
bronchitis near pollution both words in the same
sentence

14. Parenthetical grouping
 Just like in mathematical equations, differential emphasis and
ordering can be given to sets of search terms by using parentheses.
 Parenthetical searches are most effective with Boolean and field
code searches.
 (au: dawkins) AND (su: protostomes) searches the author field for
dawkins and the subject fields for protostomes.

15. Multilink and Citation Linker
 “Multilink-enabled” means that Google Scholar, Biological Abstracts, or whatever
search engine or database you might be using has been connected to “link resolver”
software
 It will search all the databases in a specified list for full-text versions of articles you
may find in sources that do not offer full-text or for items in databases for which we
have no subscription.
Citation Linker
 Upper right hand corner of the Articles & Databases page.
 Once you have a citation for an article you want, simply fill in the fields in the
Citation Linker and click GO.
 It will then do the same thing as Multilink by searching our journals and databases
for a full-text version of your article.

16. THANK YOU