Part of the Data and Multimedia Journalism module on the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University

1. MED7126 Data and Multimedia Journalism
Paul Bradshaw
Getting the data
Advanced search tips

2. Don’t ask for what you want:
describe what you expect to
find
Search operators

3. What text will it contain?
Where will that text be?
What text will it not contain?
Imagine the data: text

4. Specific references, not
general:
Specify a constituency…
…a school
…an institution code
…an invoice number
…a piece of jargon

10. quotes: “disclosure log”
asterisk “between * and 2014”
minus “hate crime” -religion
-"publication scheme"
Number ranges: 2000..2014

11. ‘life expectancy Birmingham’

12. "life expectancy"
"perry barr"

13. inurl:

14. inurl:foi
inurl:ccg
inurl:intranet
inurl:search.asp
inurl:search.php

15. intitle:
allintitle:

16. intitle:foi
allintitle:disclosure log
intitle:“bank fines”

17. intext:
allintext:

18. intext:“miserable failure”
allintext:miserable failure

19. "life expectancy"
"perry barr"

20. "life expectancy"
"perry barr"
filetype:xls

22. "life expectancy"
"perry barr"
filetype:xls
site:ons.gov.uk

23. "life expectancy"
"perry barr"
filetype:xls
site:ons.gov.uk
2009..2014

24. "life expectancy"
"perry barr"
filetype:xls
site:ons.gov.uk
2009..2014
-winter

26. Where is it likely to be
What format?
When was it not published?
Imagine the data: meta data

27. site:

28. 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

29. filetype:

30. filetype:xls
filetype:xlsx
filetype:pdf
filetype:csv
filetype:ppt
filetype:doc
filetype:docx
filetype:xml

31. search tools

33. “disclosure log” site:gov.uk
allintitle:hate crime report
filetype:pdf site:police.uk
art inurl:search.asp -library
Combine operators:

34. research.google.com

35. zanran.com

36. 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

37. 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

38. Links:
Pinboard.in/
u:paulbradshaw/t:data
+searchengine