Research Methods for Degree Study

Performing Effective Internet Search

Prepared by: xxx First Prepared on: xx-xx-xx Last Modified on: 22-04-2009 Copyright 2004 Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology

Topic & Structure of the lesson

The Search Engine
What is a Search Engine? Types of Search Engine Importance of Search Engines to Academic Research

Using Search Engines

Using Phrases and Keywords Effective Search Engine tactics

Risks of Online Sources

Academic strength of online resources

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Learning Outcomes
Understand the importance of search engine in Secondary Research Using search engines effectively with appropriate keywords and phrases Understand the risk of using online resources for academic research

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Main Teaching Points

The Search Engine
What is a Search Engine? Types of Search Engine Importance of Search Engines to Academic Research

Using Search Engines

Using Phrases and Keywords Effective Search Engine tactics

Risks of Online Sources

Academic strength of online resources

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What is a Search Engine?

A search engine is a program designed to help find information stored on a computer system such as the World Wide Web, or a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of references that match those criteria.
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What is a Search Engine?

The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase)
Retrieves a list of references that match those criteria. In most cases, search engine usually refers to a Web search engine, which searches for information on the public Web

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Types of Search Engines

Web Search Engines:
Google MSN Search Yahoo! Search Northern Lights Ask Jeeves

Academic Journal Search Engines (Subscription)

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Types of Search Engines

Academic Journal Search Engines (Subscription)
Emerald Journal Proquest EBSCO Business/IT Search IEEE Journal Databases

Library Search Engines (OPAC)

APIIT/UCTI Library Search engine National Library Search engine
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Search Engines - Software They use software programs known as robots, spiders or crawlers.
A robot is a piece of software that automatically follows hyperlinks from one document to the next around the Web. When a robot discovers a new site, it sends information back to its main site to be indexed.

Ref: http://www.monash.com/spidap2.html
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Importance of Search Engines For the same reason you need a card catalogue or book in a library.
There is lots of great and useful information in a library, but it's physically impossible to examine all the books personally.

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Importance of Search Engines Not even the most indefatigable websurfer could hyperlink to all the documents in the aptly named World Wide Web. Search engines gives you the ability to look for more information from one source (Search engine)

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Using Search Engines

1. Know what youre looking for:
Are you looking for information about a person? A company? A software product? A health-related problem? Do you want to find a job? Do you need to research a term paper? Document a news story? Size up your company's competition?

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Using Search Engines

2. Using keywords and phrases:
Searching on a noun (the name of a person, place or thing), remember that most nouns are subsets of other nouns. Enter the smallest possible subset that describes what you want. Be specific. Example: If you want to buy a car, don't enter the keyword "car" if you can enter the keyword "Toyota." Better still, enter the phrase "Toyota showrooms" AND the name of the city where you live.

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Using Search Engines

3. Using special functions:
Read the search engine help files and take advantage of the available search refining options. Use phrases, if possible. Use the Boolean AND (or the character +) to include other keywords that you would expect to find in relevant documents.

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Using Search Engines:

Example: If you want to find out how medical details about your grandmother's diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, try entering "Alzheimer's" AND "symptoms" AND "prognosis." If you want to find out about Alzheimer's care and community resources, query on "Alzheimer's" AND "support groups" AND "resources" AND NOT "symptoms."

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Using Search Engines

4. Using special constrains:
Read the search engine help files and take advantage of the available search refining options. Limiting the kind of file to look for such as pdf. or html. Limiting the time frame such as last 6 months or 5 years. The choice of language
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Risk of Online Sources

Finding the information you want on the Internet is only the first step. There is a lot of material available, but not all of it is equally reliable and useful. As a researcher, his/her large part of the job is not simply to find information but to make judgements about its merit. Before any material found being used, one needs to spend some time evaluating it for accuracy and importance.

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Evaluating Online Resources

The source:
The source of the material might give you a clue to it's reliability. A site maintained by a university or government organisation might be more reliable than one maintained by a private citizen. Research papers published by academic bodies are usually refereed or accepted by board of editors who are the experts of the field.
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Evaluating Online Resources

Accredited Author:
The status of the writer is often of considerable importance in deciding the reliability of information. One can probably assume that material written or otherwise provided by a known expert in the field is likely to be reliable. i.e. A PhD or Professor related to the topic Authors credibility can be verified by looking at their list of publications and bodies that they are attach to
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Evaluating Online Resources Age of Online Information

Sometimes the age of information matters. If one needs current statistics then check the age of the material found. As a rule of thumb, in most fields anything more than five years old is probably outdated.

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Evaluating Online Resources

Frequency of citation
But just because you have never heard of the author of the page doesn't mean that the information is inaccurate or unreliable, but it does mean that you can't take it at face value. You might have to do some cross-checking, either elsewhere on the net, or with books or articles.

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Evaluating Online Resources Internet Design and integrity:

How an Internet resource is designed may have a lot of influence on how you use it. A site which is always too busy to access, too slow to download or too difficult to navigate may not be worth your valuable time, no matter how useful and relevant the information is.

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Conclusion
Results from a web search engine is useful if used effectively Unless the source is accredited (i.e. web journals), take the information at face value. Use together with primary research and physical resources (i.e. core text books, reference books)

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Tutorial
Identify a topic/subject and use the various search engines ( 5 search engines) by playing around with the various functions to search for information Prepare a table highlighting the kind of info, file type, amount of info, speed, relevancy and etc for all 5 search engines used. Provide recommendation for the best search engine for the identified topic/subject

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Review Questions
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Define the term search engine Discuss the four methods that can be used for an effective search of information online. What are the risks of information found online? Is it good to solely rely on online information for an assignment or in doing research? Justify your answer Information Technology has greatly advanced in the last two decades. Discuss the benefits of this to research. Discuss the approaches that can be taken to evaluate the reliability of online information.

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Question and Answer Session

Q&A
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Next Session

Literature Review

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