Internet Searching Strategiesor

How to Make the Internet Work for You

Katherine Lucia-VisneskiClarence Middle School

©KLV

How to Stop Being a Slave to the Internet

Understand who uses technology and why

Understand what a search engine is and how it works

Learn the techniques and strategies needed to search quickly and effectively

Learn how to evaluate your results

Be the engine (OK, a little too Zen)

Searcher Categories

Searchers/Users fall into 4 basic categories:Technophobes (or those intimidated by technology)—They get someone else to do it for them or avoid it all together (“I’m too old”, “It’s too hard”)Grudge Users—They only use those applications they have to use for workAcceptors—They use technology to solve problems, answer questions, or make life easierTechnophiles—They integrate technology into their daily lives, use it whenever they can, and help others with their technology needs

Reasons for Searching

Personal Need

Professional Need

Response to an Inquiry

Confirm facts/ information

Entertainment

What is a Search Engine?According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a search engine is:"1. a software program that searches a database and gathers  and reports information that contains or is related to specified terms, 2. a website whose primary function is providing a search engine for gathering and reporting information available on the Internet or a portion of the Internet"                                                          --http://www.bartleby.com

Meaning…

It is a computer program that matches your search terms to WebPages or documents that are available in the Internet.

Examples: www.yahoo.com

www.google.comwww.altavista.comwww.alltheweb.com

Keywords

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a keyword is, “a descriptive word; a word used as a reference point for finding other words or information” (www.bartleby.com)They are the words that you want the search engine to look for in a web document

Examples:Roman Dining

Cicero AND politics

Senators OR patres

Jupiter NOT planet

Caesar, triumvirate

Strategies Searching Strategies:

When searching using a search engine using keywords and search terms is the easiest way to search.  Here are some strategies that will help you to be successful in your searching:

Use the most obvious terms for your search.  For example, if you want to find facts about Roman gods, use "Roman gods" as your search terms. Try not be too general.  If you want to find facts about Roman gods, don't use "Romans" as your search terms.  Add "gods" to make it specific enough. If you want very specific information, try the specific terms first.  If you aren't successful, try making the search terms broader.  For example, if "Roman dinners" isn't successful, try "Roman dining". If you don't get the results that you want, try a different search engine or meta-search engine.  They don't all search the same sites and databases.

Advanced Techniques

Use “” to surround phrases so that the search engine searches for those exact phrases, otherwise the engine will search for the words individually Most search engines have stop words like “a,an,the, and, or”. Use a + or – symbol to force the engine to include those words in your search. Play with several search engines to decide which one is best for you.

Last Resort Search Terms

Also known as the “everything but the kitchen sink” technique:

Type in all of the words you want included in your search.

Hit “Search”.

See what happens.

You might be pleasantly surprised!

Targeted Searches

Advanced searching can be a very rewarding way to pare down the number of hits

Image searching lets you search for images only rather than looking for images buried in articles or text

News searching lets you look through news articles for the information you want rather than web documents

Shortcuts

Control+f=Find

Helps you find keywords in documents

Control+n=New webpage

Allows you to open a new webpage without losing your work

Google Deskbar

Allows you to search and define words without leaving your current application such as Word

Google Toolbar

Allows you to search without having to open a new window

Beginning Your Search

When you are beginning your search:Consider Precision v. Recall

Recall is the amount of relevant documents out of all the possible documents

Precision is the relevant documents in retrieved set out of all the documents in a retrieved set

When recall is high, precision is low

When precision is high, recall is low

Decide which is more important for your search need

Do you need a lot of information or a few highly relevant items?

Results

When you get your results, also think about:Authority: Who wrote the site? What are their credentials? URL’s ending in .gov, .edu, .mil, .org tend to be more reliable than .com (you can even search that way on Google’s Advanced Search page Google )Currency: How up-to-date is the information? Check to see if you can tell when the last time the site was updated.Remember that ANYONE can put information on the Internet! Be careful!

Let’s Play

Let’s put some of these ideas to the test…

Are 348,000 Hits Too Many for You?

That is the number of hits that you can expect for the search “Roman dining”That is a typical number of search results an average searcher can expect…or MOREBy the end of this session, you will no longer be an AVERAGE searcherWatch as this number gets smaller and smaller while our results get better and better

Advanced Search: Roman Dining

We are going to go from 348,000 to 624 in a matter of seconds (EP)

Google Advanced Search Page

Now, how about 624 to 80? (Domain)

Google Advanced Search Page

I now have to look through 347,920 less pages to wade through

But say I change my mind based on my results…

Refined Search:Roman Dining

Now I want Roman recipes instead of information on dining using Roman recipes as my termsGoogle492,000. Hmmm. A little cumbersome.Google using “Roman recipes”1,990. Still a few too many.Google Advanced Search Page (Domain)I think I can handle 87. I now have 491,913 fewer pages to sift through.Now to really jazz it up…

Image Search:Roman Dining

Google Image Search

Use Roman kitchen and get 669 hits.

Use “Roman kitchen” and get 112 hits

Google Advanced Image Search and use “Roman kitchen” (Domain ) and get 3 hits

That’s 666 less images to look at!

Keep in Mind…

Less isn’t always more. Sometimes it’s good to browse more sites rather than less for the serendipitous finds

Have fun looking at things you hadn’t considered. They might yield extra information.

Now What?

What to do with all of this information?Consider building a website to warehouse your links and information www.cmslatinlady.com

Share it with colleagues or your local Classical Association

Submit it to me and I will add it to the CAWNY site! www.cawny.org

Fini

Remember:Have fun.

You’re not going to hurt anything if you try something new

Learning how to manage the Internet takes time. Be patient. Do it while you’re watching TV.

You’re already a Latin Geek; why not be a Computer Geek too?