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  Using Internet as a Research Tool

Topic 1 Introduction to Internet Resources

Categories    Subjects    Purpose    Search Facilities  Search Strategy

Basic search

  • When you use different search engine you are actually searching a slightly different part of the WWW.
  • View search engine’s Help pages
  • Keep track of the words used
  • Discover which search engines are the best for which subject


Phrase searching

  • Using “ “ around a group of words to indicate a phrase – further refine your search
  • Some provide a drop-down menu or check box with the option for “exact phrase”, or “with this exact phrase”
  • Check Search Tips


Keywords and Wildcards

  • Many forms of language
  • Words may have different spellings, e.g. centre/center
  • Need to be aware of these variations e.g. singular/plural
  • Stem and wildcards (*, ?)
    • E.g. cent* will result in centre, centres, center, centers
  • Translate the research topic into a form that will maximize your chances of finding the information
  • Focus on the topic, extract the keywords
  • Keywords are usually the nouns, verbs and important adjectives
  • Exclude articles(a, an, the), prepositions(in, of, about, on, in, above), adverbs(probably, however, very), common verbs(is, see, do) and common adjectives(fine, happy, quick)
  • Include other words of similar meaning as the information you want may be indexed under different keywords

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