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More Than Google Effective Internet Searches

OELMA Annual Conference 2010 Presenter: Kay Holton

More than Google Search Engines

students tend to use Google every time they conduct an internet search other search engines may retrieve needed results more efficiently and effectively making students aware that there are options of different search engines and their attributes may decrease student (and teacher/librarian) frustration!

Recommended search engines


www.dogpile.com www.lycos.com www.alltheweb.com www.altavista.com www.ask.com www.askforkids.com (good for lower-level


students)

Rationale for recommendations:


clean site with few distracters no or little advertising on site site offers suggestions to improve search site is student-friendly and not too adultlike search results in fewer .com sites and more .org, .gov, etc. sites

Your turn to try!

Follow the directions on the handout to determine your favorite search engine that you will recommend to your students!

12 minutes will be allotted for this


activity

Helpful sites for search engine information


http://novemberlearning.com/resources/infor mation-literacy-resources/ http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies /information/5locate/adviceengine.html

Search Tips

Use quotation marks


searches for the words in the exact order you entered them
Example: climate change retrieves results for climate change instead of for climate and for change

Use minus sign to exclude a word from your search


be sure to use the minus sign right before the word to exclude the word (with no space in
between the minus sign and the word)

Example: baskets -Longaberger

Use a wildcard * symbol


Expands the search to include variations of the search term
Example: climate change*

Limit search options to certain sites


site:gov for government sites site:org for organization sites site:k12 for most U.S. K-12 sites site: edu for U.S. higher education sites site:com for company sites site:net for network sites site:mil for military sites

Use Boolean logic


OR
search will retrieve information for at least one of the terms- finds one term, the other term, or both of the terms good to use for synonymous terms or concepts expands search Example:
climate change global warming

climate change OR global warming

combine more terms and retrieve more results


Example:
climate change

global warming

weather

climate change OR global warming OR weather

AND
search will retrieve information in which both terms are present narrows search Examples: climate global
change warming

climate change AND global warming


climate change

global warming

weather

climate change AND global warming AND weather

NOT
search will retrieve information in which only one of the terms is present the term selected by our search excludes records from search Example:

trees

flowers

trees NOT flowers -records will be retrieved that contain the word trees -no records will be retrieved that contain the word flowers, even if the word trees appears in the record

The Google Game

Goal: to find information with the fewest hits How: follow directions on the handout using the search tips learned in the workshop

Time: 12 minutes will be allotted for this activity


Prizes!!!

Discussion and sharing!

Questions?

For copy of the PowerPoint presentation and/or the workshop handouts, contact me at:

kholton@kent.edu

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