The Knowledge Network
Search Tips
Participant Notes and Practical
Participant Notes and Practical
The Knowledge Network – Search Tips and Tools
This presentation is a brief introduction to information search tips and tools.
It covers identifying keywords and applying them in an information search ; the differences between structured and unstructured sources, the reasons it’s easier to search an organised, structured source ; Boolean operators and using limits or filters.
Although that might sound a bit scary, the presentation should help make finding information easier. Basically, it’s hints, tips and tricks you can use to search and find the information you need.
Types of information search
A search which produces many irrelevant results is known as unfocussed while a search which recovers mainly relevant items is known as a focussed search. This session aims to help improve your skills in both types of searching.
The simplest type of search is called a keyword, basic or simple search. For a basic search, there is very little pre-planning. The search statement needs only a little thought because it consists of only one or two words. This type of search is often called “quick and dirty”. The quick is because it is easy to implement and, depending on the source you search, can return results very quickly. The dirty refers to the fact that usually, you will retrieve a huge number of results, many of which are irrelevant to your needs.
An advanced search is more sophisticated and takes time and effort to plan so as to ensure the recovery of a smaller number of more relevant results. Advanced searching often begins with a broad research question which is gradually refined into a more focussed search strategy.
A Sample Google Search
This is an example of what might happen when you use Google. You’re a hand crafter and you’ve realised that you need supplies to finish one of your projects. You want to try to get them at the best possible price, preferably from a supplier who can get them to you quickly. So, without too much thought or planning, you type the keywords ‘craft supplies’ into Google. If you don’t change your location or the area you want results from, you’ll get over 58 million ‘hits’ including information on card-making, wood-turning, art supplies and so on. This is definitely quick and definitely dirty.
But, with a bit of thought, you realise that if you search for information on your crafts of spinning and weaving and use those as your keywords for the search, Google returns around 368 thousand results. Although this is still a lot of information, it does demonstrate a simple way to get a smaller number of results which are closer to the information you’re looking for.
Structured/unstructured information source
So, we’ve had just a quick look at searching with Google. But if we have a closer look at the way information is organised (or not!) on the internet, it might give you a better idea about why the results are the way they are.
As you’ll know, anybody can upload anything to the world wide web. Because of that, no-one is ‘in control’ of the information ‘out there’ so it’s not catalogued or organised in any way. It’s just a huge random collection of stuff. Like this….
On the other hand, if you use a database (or even The Knowledge Network!) as your search source, there’s been some human effort put into organising and structuring the information to make it a bit easier to find. These sources will have the information grouped into categories, subjects and so on. So, if you use a subject-name as the trigger for your search, it almost guarantees that every result pulled back will be relevant to the search term and therefore easier for you to identify the items you need.
Truncation
There are times when you’re searching for information, that it’s not clear which form of a word might have been used in the information source you’re using.
To make sure that you pull back all of the relevant information, regardless of the form of the word used in
the information source, it can help if you use only the root of the word you wish to use as one of your search terms.
In this example, we’d like to see all sorts of information about friends and friendship. So, the root (or core) of the word we’d like to use as the search-term is “friend”. Typing this into a search engine will pull back information on Friend, Friends, Befriend, Friendly and all of the other terms you see illustrated here.
Wildcards
These are symbols you can use with truncation. You use the position of the wildcard to indicate whether you’d like your ‘root’ to be the start of the word you’re using or the end. For instance, if you wanted to find information where ‘friend’ was the end of the search-term you could type $friend.
Boolean operators
When you’ve identified your keywords, you often have to combine them to create a search strategy (or
search statement). Lots of library catalogues, journal databases and Internet search engines use Boolean operators to combine keywords into search strategies.
Boolean searches are based on Boolean Logic - a system of establishing relationships between
terms, devised by a 19th century mathematician named George Boole.
Boolean Logic uses only three operators or linking words : AND, OR and NOT. These help researchers to eliminate unwanted information from their search results by making the search statement a bit more precise. This is done by linking two or more search terms, using any of the Boolean operators.
The AND Operator
AND is used to link two search terms to narrow a search and bring back a smaller number of results. This happens because ANDing means that BOTH the search keywords MUST appear in any retrieved materials. For example, suppose you have a blocked drain at home and don’t want to pay for a plumber to fix the problem. You know that plumbing rods would help resolve the problem so you decide to see whether you can buy a set at a reasonable price. To search for the tools, you might use Boolean AND illustrated by the circles here : only the darker area at the intersection of the circles, contains both Plumbing AND Rods and that’s where your results would come from.
The OR operator
The Boolean operator, OR, is used to link search terms to broaden a search and bring back more results. This type of search pulls back all materials containing either of the search keywords. This can be useful for example, when you’re searching across British and American information sources because there are spelling differences between the two countries.
The example here is probably not one you’d use but is included here just to illustrate the point. This search would pull back materials containing the word colour whether it was spelled the British or American way.
The NOT operator
Not is used to exclude information from your search. So, if you’re online looking for trousers but you don’t want them in black, your search statement would be ‘trousers NOT black’. The green circle is all trousers while the purple circle is all trousers which are not black.
Filtering searches
Search engines and databases often allow you to apply filters to your search. This helps you to be more specific about the type of items you want to find.
If we think again about the Google search for spinning and weaving supplies, we can apply a filter to specify that we want results only from the UK rather than from the whole of the world wide web. And, if we want to be even more local, we can specify our own location. To narrow the search even more, Google offers a time filter allowing you to define the time period you wish to search and other filters including only sites with images, pages translated from other languages and so on. Applying filters can help to reduce the number of results pulled back but applying too many can cause nothing to be identified.
The Knowledge Network – Search Tips and Tools
Practical
Is this statement true or false? / The advantage of using a basic search isthat it returns a small number of focussed
results.
True/False
Is web information structured? / No/Yes
What are the names of the least sophisticated
search types? (Three answers) / a Simple d. Unsophisticated
b Keyword e. Easy
c Basic
Is this statement true or false? / The simplest type of search is based on
one or two words.
True/False
Which of the following descriptions are
true of an advanced search? (Two answers) / a Produces focussed results
b Takes time and effort to plan
c Quick to implement
From the list on the right, which information
source would be easiest to search? / a. A pile of paperwork
b. The Knowledge Network
c. The Web
To broaden a search (pull back more results) you use which Boolean operator? / a AND
b OR
c NOT