2. INTRODUCTION
• The incredible growth in the amount of electronic
information that has become available in the last
few years has made the ability to search &
navigate these e-sources increasingly important.
More often than not researching topic now
includes using not only print sources, it also
requires accessing information via the internet
OPACS, CD-ROMS, & commercial databases such
as westlaw, Firstserach, & Lexis.
3. BASIC SEARCH TECHNIQUES
1. Keyword & Phrase search:
A search can be conducted by using a single search term or a phrase
comprising more than one term.
Keyword search:
e.g., “Library”
Phrase Search:
e.g., “library management”
4. 2. Truncation Search:
Truncation allows a search to be conducted for all the different forms
of words having the same common roots.
A number of different options are available for truncation:
• Right truncation:
E.g. compute*
• Left truncation:
E.g. *hyl will retrieve words like methyl, ethyl etc.
• Internal truncation:
E.g. col*r will retrieve both the terms colour & color.
5. 3. PROXIMITY SEARCH
Here it allows us to specify how close two or more words must
appear in order to register a match. It is of 3 types:
(a) Word proximity
(b) Sentence proximity
(c)Paragraph proximity
(a) WORD PROXIMITY: E.g. “content collection”/4
It retrieve content & collection in 4 word difference.
Ordered proximity:
E.g. “content collection”/4
Unordered proximity:
E.g. “content collection”@4
6. (b)Sentence Proximity:
A sentence proximity allow to search for term which must be in the
same sentence.
E.g. “Library management”/S (ORDERED)
“Library management”@S (UNORDERED)
These two word must be appear in the same sentence.
(c)PARAGRAPH PROXIMITY:
It allows to search which must be occurring in same paragraph.
E.g. “Library automation”/P (ORDERED)
“Library automation”@P (UNORDERED)
These are two words must appear in same paragraph in it’s retrieval.
7. 4. BOOLEAN SEARCH:
Many search engine allow use of ‘AND’, ‘OR’ & ‘NOT’ to narrow or
broaden a request.
OPERATOR AND
E.g. Library AND Automation
The result will consist of documents that contain both words i.e. library &
automation.
OPERATOR OR
E.g. Library OR Automation
It retrieves maximum number of document because it retrieves document
having library, having automation or both library and automation.
OPERATOR NOT
E.g. Library AND Automation NOT India
It retrieves documents having the word “Library and Automation” but not
having the word “India”.
8. 5. LIMITING SEARCH:
E.g. Document, published after 2000
E.g. Library Automation, pdf
E.g. Birds nest, Hindi language.
6. FIELD SEARCH:
Title Search
URL Search
Link Search
File type Search
