• Review terminology & some friendly advice
• Basic search techniques
• Advanced search techniques
• Optional lab

Terminology

• Databases
  • Bibliographic
  • Numerical/Statistical
  • Reference
  • Full-text
  
  
• Records
• Fields

Friendly Advice

• Focus on the concept and its effect on search results, rather than the "how-to"
  • there are many different search engines
  • search software continually changes
  • concepts can be applied across databases
  
  
• Take the time to learn how to apply these techniques
  
• Avoid the problems of:
  • too little information
  • too much information
  
  
• Don't let the software bully you around

Basic Search Techniques

• There are two basic ways to search:
  • controlled vocabulary searching
  • keyword searching

Controlled Vocabulary Searching

• Descriptors are selected from a standardized list
• A person selects the descriptors using a thesaurus

Thesaurus

SAMPLE ENTRY FROM Library of Congress Subject Headings

Schizophrenia (May Subd Geog)
[RC514]
UF Schizophrenic disorders
BT Psychoses
RT Schizotypal personality disorder
NT Paranoid schizophrenia
--Chemotherapy
--Diagnosis

Keyword Searching

• Words are automatically indexed by a computer
• Stopwords: words that are NOT automatically indexed
• Every word may not be keyword indexed

• AND
  • must include all of the terms
  • narrows the search
  • archaeology and bible

• OR
  • can include any of the terms
  • expands the search
  • homosexual or gay or lesbian
  • germany or france or switzerland
• NOT
  • excludes terms
  • narrows the search
  • advertising not television

• Substituting "wild card" characters for one or more letters
  • feminis* [finds feminist, feminists, feminism]
  • wom*n [finds woman, women]

• Restricts search results to a sub-set of the database
  • English language items
  • items published after 1992
  • items located in the Art Library
  • scores
  • research done on humans
  • word must appear in the title

• Information about the database
• Information about the search software
• May be online or printed
• Ask a librarian!

• Get more precise search results
• Win friends
• Influence people

• Clustering groups of terms in parentheses
• Ensures the software executes the search correctly
  • (spouse* or wife or wives) and (abus* or batter* or violence)

• Requiring words to appear within a certain distance of each other
  • religion with social class
  • asian* near2 american*

• Requiring words to appear immediately adjacent to each other
  • new adj mexico

Order

• Requiring words to appear in a specified order
  • cable pre (television or TV)

• Requiring words to occur a specified number of times
  • affirmative action at least 8

• Re-ordering search results in a particular arrangement
  • alphabetical sort by journal name
  • chronological sort by year of publication

• Re-ordering search results by relevancy based on specified criteria
  • rank by frequency of an important word

• Select records within a set for future action

• Different ways search results can be saved for future use
  • print out
  • download to disk
  • send to email address

• using "natural language" in the search statement
  • "What has been the impact of NAFTA on wages in Mexico and the United States?"

• "Why don't more computer systems allow the use of natural language searching?"

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