The Electronic Research August 22, 2006

SEARCH STRATEGIES Boolean Operators AND, OR, NOT Proximity Operators Selecting Database

BOOLEAN OPERATORS OR AND NOT

The OR Boolean Operator DOG CANINE Use the word OR to group together synonyms and near synonyms between search terms. CONCEPT A CONCEPT B HOUND CONCEPT C

The AND Boolean Operator You would use “AND” to intersect all the material on EDUCATION and all the material on PSYCHOLOGY : CONCEPT A CONCEPT B EDUCATION PSYCHOLOGY

The NOT Boolean Operator DISCIPLINE CORPORAL PUNISHMENT CONCEPT A CONCEPT B The Boolean NOT operator eliminates records containing the phrase “corporal punishment.”

TRUNCATION In a search, the ability to enter the first part of a keyword, insert a symbol (usually *), and accept any variant spellings or word endings, from the occurrence of the symbol forward.(E.g., teach* retrieves teach, teacher, teachers, teaching, etc.)

Proximity Operators/Connectors Adjacent  drug adj abuse  The word drug must be in front of, and adjacent to, the word abuse Within  drug w/5 abuse  The words drugs and abuse must be within 5 words of each other (before or after) Same  drug same abuse  The words drugs and abuse must be in the same field

Web Accessible Resources Ebooks (45,076) Government Documents Journal Articles Reference Books 80+ total electronic resources, 80 available via remote access, Most provide full or partial text.

Electronic Resource Gateways

Remote Access After selecting a database you will be asked for your Username and Password (this will authenticate you for a search session). Username is the first 4 characters of your last name plus the last 4 digits of Campus Wide I.D. (CWID)number. Jones, John / jone5678 O'Brian, Carol / obri5678 Lee, Kelly / lee5678 Password is your full CWID (example: )

How to Access Sign up for an account using one of the campus computers or the proxy menu. You create your own user name and password.

General Databases Academic Search Premier eLibrary curriculum InfoTrac Onefile Research Library Wilson OmniFile FullText

ACCESS TO ERIC ERIC (Educational Resource Information Center) - Information culled from the journals included in Current Index to Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index. (It indexes both journal articles and educational documents). Designed for teachers, students, administrators, researchers and others interested in the field of education. Full text of over 2,200 digests, including references for even more information. Citations and abstracts from over 980 educational and education-related journals. EBSCO, or Government Web Site. EBSCOGovernment Web Site

SEARCH STRATEGIES Boolean Operators AND, OR, NOT Search Engine Math + add - take out x multiply

SEARCH ENGINE MATH Before learning math, it’s a helpful reminder that the more specific your search is, the more likely you will find what you want. Don’t be afraid to tell the search engine exactly what you are looking for.

USING THE + SYMBOL TO ADD Imagine that you want to find pages that contain information on lady in Crawford, TX who giving the president a hard time. And you can only remember her first name. You could search this way: +crawford +cindy Only pages that contain both words would appear in the results. (but in this case mostly for the supermodel.) A better search would be +crawford +texas +cindy

USING THE - SYMBOL TO SUBTRACT Sometimes you want a search engine to find pages that have one word on them and not another. Suppose you want information on The Apprentice Show but nothing about Donald Trump. Searching +Apprentice -Trump will remove any pages about Donald Trump.

USING QUOTATION MARKS TO MULTIPLY Doing a phrase search allows you to tell a search engine to give you pages where the terms appear in exactly the order you specify. “911 terrorist attack” would return only pages that have all the words in the exact order shown.

Tips or “How to” Each search engine or subject directory has a link to learn more about it. How to Choose the Search Tools You Need by UC Berkeley Library uides/Internet/ToolsTables.html uides/Internet/ToolsTables.html Search Engine Showdown Each search engine or subject directory has a link to learn more about it. How to Choose the Search Tools You Need by UC Berkeley Library uides/Internet/ToolsTables.html uides/Internet/ToolsTables.html Search Engine Showdown

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) “tamut.edu is the domain. Folder names are between slashes, “bus-fin”, “comtel”, and “labs” are individual folders found on this server. This part of the URL tells your software what protocol to use. (I.e. http or ftp) This is the name of the document that is being requested. www is usually found in front of the domain, indicating web pages.

DOMAINS United States first level Domains:.net.edu.com.org.mil.gov Canada.caSweden.se Foreign countries domains

Selection

Translated

EVALUATION OF WEBSITES Authorship - are the authors known; are there links to find out more information about them; can they be contacted? Comparability with related sources- How reliable and complete are the facts? Stability of information - Is the site here today, gone tomorrow? Currency of information - when was it last updated ? Treatment and Objectivity - is the site biased; what is the writing level? Style - is this a commercial site for advertising purposes or an institutional site for providing information?

How to use the databases. If you need more instruction on how to use the databases sign up for a class. Sign-up link on the library homepage

Questions?