week 6

Search Strategies

• Truncation
• Wildcard
• Phrase Searching

Truncation                     

        Truncation is a search method that allows you to find documents containing variations on a search item. It expands the search to locate all words beginning with the same root. To do a truncation search, type the first few letters(stem) of the keyword followed by an asterisk(*). For e.g, teen* will teens, teenager, teenage and technolog* will return technology, technologies, technological etc.

Wildcard
          A wildcard is a special character such as an asterisk (*), question mark(?) or pound sign (#) that replaces one or more letters in a word. A wild card usually represents a single character. It is used in the middle of a word to match usually unknown variants of a term. For e.g, wom?n will return woman, women, and womyn.
Phrase searching          
          Phrase searching is when you use a string of words(instead of a single word) to search with. If you use phrase searching, you must put your phrase between  inverted comma " or brackets ( ) so that you can get the precise information of your term. For e.g, type like "carbon neutral", "information literacy" etc.

                              

week 5

Brainstorming for search items
           There are some ways to brainstorm search items: They are

• Selecting keywords
• Subject headings, phrases and single words

Selecting keywords
         When you're first starting to formulate your research question, it can be useful to brainstorm keywords that are synonymous with or related to the major concepts of your topic, as well as narrower and broader terms.

Subject headings
          The official words used by catalogs and many indexes to identify all of the books or articles dealing with a particular topic are called subject headings. These use a standardized vocabulary, usually give you more specific resources on your topic. Examples of subject headings are

1. Library Subject Headings
2. Science Subject Headings
3. Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms

                   
Boolean Operator
            Boolean operators are words that connect a search that may add or subtract a concept to your search. Boolean searching is combining terms such as AND, OR and NOT used in building a search statement or in putting several sets together.
Usage of Boolean searching- it allows you to group words together in an electronic database such as World Wide Web to receive a number of different types of results. Depending how you group these word, you will receive different results. It is the most common and basic search strategy.
Some of Boolean Operators are:

• AND- which allows you limit a search(return less information)
• OR- which allows you expand the search(return more information or matches)
• NOT- which allows you to exclude the words.

                                                                                                                    Boolean 'AND'

     


           

        
Profession AND Ethics                     
                    

                         




      
                                                                   
                                                  
                            
                                           
                                                     
                                                  
Whales or dolphins AND Pollution AND Legislation or law
                                
                                   

                     
                       
                                                  
                                                        Boolean 'OR'


                                                  

      

  College OR University                                                                    

                                                                           
                                                                                             

                                                                                      Politics OR Election AND Media
                                              
                                                          Boolean 'NOT'

                                                    



Moths NOT butterflies                                                 Rock AND Roll NOT Beatles

week 4

Online Databases
              An online database is a database accessible from a network, including from the Internet. When we are searching an online database, we have a major searching interface choice. This include simple and advanced search. Simple search is the database that we're normally using on the internet. But with advanced searching, we can search the more specific information online. Here are some examples of Simple and Advanced searching.

                                                       Simple Screen in a database

                                                        Advanced Screen in a database

Week 3
Search Tools                                                        

              There are some search tools that we're using widely all over the world to search every information we need.These are:

• Library Catalog               
• Internet

LIBRARY search tool includes:

• A Library Card Catalog- a file cabinet containing individual cards with bibliography information about specific items in the library.

• OPAC(Online Public Access Catalog)- Computerized online catalog of all the materials held in a library and can be searched quickly and efficiently using a computer. We can search based on the criteria of author, subject or title, publisher and date of publication of the books in the library through this OPAC.

Advantages of using OPAC

1. We can do a better job of locating books and other materials available through our own libraries as well as other libraries.
2. It can be a big help and time-saver in your search for information that is needed for papers or projects.

Other types of searching in Library search tools  
      

• Browse
• Keyword
• Reserve: a reserve item( an item that the instructor has set aside for use by his or her own students only)
• Expert 

INTERNET - also known as Information Superhighway is the electronic network that connect personal computers and organizational computer/ others around the world.


 

            









Search tools of Internet

• Search Engines- is used to search information on the World Wide Web. e.g-Google(www.google.com), Bing, Baidu etc.

• Meta-search Engines- is multiple data source.It searches multiple search engines from a single search page. In a meta-search engine, you submit keywords in its search box, and it transmits your search simultaneously to several individual search engines and their databases of web pages. e.g- Excite(www.excite.com),  MetaCrawler, Dogpile

 

• Information Gateways- which provide a central access point to the internet for a wide range of internet sites covering many popular news and information resources. It includes internet catalogues, subject directories, virtual libraries and gateways. e.g, ELDIS(the gateway to develop information), SOSIG(Social Science Information Gateway)

 

• Subject Directories- a collection of links to large number of internet resources organized by topic area. e.g, INFOMINE(http://infomine.ucr.edu), The Internet Public Library(www.ipl.org)     
• Specialized Database - also known as "invisible web" because it is out of the reach of the "spider" and their search tools.It includes statistics, maps, schedules and figures. It is indexed that can be searched, much like the search engines. e.g- Bibliographic Database, Google Scholar.