1. Search Strategies

2. Information Search Strategy
Why search skills are important?
Increasingly people are turning to the Internet to find information. People often assume that they need no training to search the Internet and that technology does all the work.
In fact, a little time spent in formulating a search strategy will both save you time and provide you with greatly improved results.

3. It is very tempting to rush into your search for information without planning exactly how you are going to carry out your search. People often make some common mistakes:
• using the wrong search tool/resource for the job
• not planning a good search strategy.
A lack of knowledge about which resources are available, and about how a particular resource works can waste time and produce poor results.
Learning how to search efficiently in databases, and how information is structured in them, provides you with useful transferable knowledge and skills

4. Search strategy a systematic plan for conducting a search.
The process of planning a search strategy will help clarify your thinking about your topic, and ensure that you are looking for information appropriate to your task.
Taking time to plan before you begin searching, will save you time once you start exploring the resources on offer.
You are more likely to search efficiently if you take a methodical approach:

5. Step 1 - make sure you fully understand your question/topic
First look at the question or project specification you have chosen/been given and make sure you fully understand it.
Before you can find any information for your project or question you must understand fully what is being asked.
If you're not sure about the meaning of any word, name, place etc then look it up before you start. The library has a range of subject dictionaries and encyclopaedias for you to use. Alternatively, discuss the project with your supervisor/friend.

6. Step 2 - Identify keywords and phrases
Once you are sure you know the meaning of the question/project specification, work out which are the main words or phrases, known as keywords or key phrases.
Keywords and key phrases indicate what the project or question is really about. They provide initial search terms for finding information. It is important to spot them all if you are going to answer questions correctly.
using the wrong keywords means you will get the wrong information

7. Step 3 – Identify synonyms and related terms.
Identifying the major concepts is an excellent start, but there’s no guarantee that the database will have indexed using the words that you have identified, even if they are on exactly the topic you’re interested in.
Therefore, to ensure you find all the information about your topic, for each concept, you need to identify as many different words and phrases that might be used to describe it as you can.
Think of broader terms which will help you find more general information. Think of narrower terms to help you find more specific information

8. Step 4 – (Search Statement Development) creating your search statement They are many ways we use to create search statements:

9. Phrase searching How to search for a exact phrase or quote ?
Put the search phrase in quotation marks “ _”
“Information literacy”
How to exclude terms from search results?
Use the dash or minus sign before the word to be excluded. Eg
HIV-AIDS will retrieve articles or websites on HIV only
News-cnn-bbc will remove cnn and bbc news agency.

10. How to search within a single site?
Type in your search phrase and the url eg
Application form:uz.ac.zw
How to search for a particular file type? Eg ppt, exl, pdf ....
search term filetype:pdf
information literacy filetype:pdf

11. How to search for a web title
Intitle: university of zimbabwe
Search google without using google search engine.
Delivers google page results with

12. Boolean logic
Search terms may be combined using Boolean logic, so that the most relevant results are returned. Most online catalogues and databases will have a default operator, and if you type in keywords without specifying an operator/s, it will automatically use the default.
Three logical commands/operators are available in most search software – OR, AND, NOT. Some databases uses other operators, check the Help facilities.

13. Boolean operators
In the diagrams, below, the box represents all the articles in the database, whilst circles “a” and “b” represent articles that include keyword “a” and “b”, respectively. Retrieved results are shown in the shaded area.

14. Phrase searching
You may also be able to search for an exact phrase. This may done by selecting the “exact phrase” option, or by specifying the phrase yourself (this is usually denoted by the use of quotation marks).
“Operating system” – returns records that contain both operating and system immediately adjacent to each other

15. Truncation Right truncation
audit* (audit, audits, auditing, audition….)
Internal Truncation
Colo*r (color, colour)
(used on instances where you are not sure if the word is a singular term)

16. Question Searching
A question may be entered in the search field of a search engine.
Ask Jeeves is a search engine that encourages the use of question searching
Search using Ask Jeeves ----
Why is the sky blue?

17. Advanced Searching
Advanced search features are offered on many engines by going to an “Advanced Search” page and making selections
This is effective in narrowing search returns to a specific topic or phrase
Google Advanced Search
Go to the Google site and then show where to click on Advanced Search.
Discuss what to put in the fields for researching:
The similarities and differences of grass snakes in Arizona and Iowa

18. Search Statement Development
Effects of the sun on development of skin cancer in Zimbabwe.
Synonyms
(Effect-symptoms, Sun-Solar, Skin- epithelium, Cancer-carcinoma)
Final Search Statement
(effect OR symptom) AND (skin OR epithelium) AND (cancer or carcinoma) + Zimbabwe
Sun Skin Cancer

19. Step 5 - start searching
Step 6 – evaluate your search results
Step 7 - saving searches/creating alerts
Step 8 - taking references
You may need to revise your search strategy once you have surveyed the results from your first search due to returning results that are inappropriate to your topic