The Electronic Research

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The Electronic Research

• August 22, 2006

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SEARCH STRATEGIES

• Boolean Operators
• AND, OR, NOT
• Proximity Operators
• Selecting Database

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BOOLEAN OPERATORS

• OR
• AND
• NOT

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

You would use AND to intersect all the material
on EDUCATION and all the material on PSYCHOLOGY
CONCEPT A
PSYCHOLOGY
EDUCATION
CONCEPT B
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The NOT Boolean Operator
The Boolean NOT operator eliminates records
containing the phrase corporal punishment.
CONCEPT A
DISCIPLINE
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
CONCEPT B
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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.)

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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

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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.

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Electronic Resource Gateways
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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 /
  12345678  jone5678        O'Brian, Carol /
  12345678 obri5678        Lee, Kelly /
  12345678 lee5678
• Password is your full CWID (example 12345678)

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How to Access

• http//www.netLibrary.com/
• Sign up for an account using one of the campus
  computers or the proxy menu.
• You create your own user name and password.

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General Databases

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

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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.

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SEARCH STRATEGIES

• Boolean Operators
• AND, OR, NOT
• Search Engine Math
• add
• - take out
• x multiply

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SEARCH ENGINE MATH

• Before learning math, its a helpful reminder
  that the more specific your search is, the more
  likely you will find what you want.
• Dont be afraid to tell the search engine exactly
  what you are looking for.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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 http//www.lib.berkeley.edu/Teach
  ingLib/Guides/Internet/ToolsTables.html
• Search Engine Showdown http//www.notess.com/searc
  h/

• 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 http//www.lib.berkeley.edu/Teach
  ingLib/Guides/Internet/ToolsTables.html
• Search Engine Showdown http//www.notess.com/searc
  h/

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URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
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.
http//www.tamut.edu/bus-fin/comtel/labs/main.htm
tamut.edu is the domain.
Folder names are between slashes,
bus-fin, comtel, and labs are individual
folders found on this server.
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DOMAINS
Foreign countries domains
United States first level Domains .net
.edu .com .org .mil .gov
Canada .ca
Sweden .se
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http//babelfish.altavista.com/cgibin/translate?
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Selection
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Translated
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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?

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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
  http//library.tamut.edu .

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Questions?