|
| |
INTERNET SEARCHING BASICS
The
Problems with Doing Research on the Internet
 |
Time
Consuming: Sometimes even the simplest searches turn out to take hours,
especially if one starts to wander
. |
|
Ambiguous:
Thousands of “hits” make it difficult to determine just where to go,
and often you never find exactly what you are looking for.
|
|
Validity:
Everybody and his brother can have a site on the internet; just whom do you
trust?
|
|
Reflection:
The old research rules have changes and with pages available at the click of
a mouse, there is very little time for reflection.
|
On
With the Show
We're going to learn a little bit about searching today. The
topic given to me by Ms. Metz was Neoliberalism in the Colombian Economy
- not an easy topic.
The first thing you need to do is to understand the topic you are looking for
so you can look for it using different terms if necessary.
In order to better understand the term "Neoliberalism", we
should do a search for the term.
Types of Search Engines
There are various types of searches that one can perform on the internet.
These include Subject Directories, Keyword Searching, Meta-Searching,
and (my own category) Specialty Searching.
| A Subject Directory, like Yahoo,
one of the best on the web, will give you great information IF you know
exactly what you are looking for and you can narrow down or scale up
your search topic according to Yahoo's structure. |
| A Keyword Search engine, like Hotbot,
Northern Light,
or Alta Vista, work
by matching your search terms with their index of web pages. These
engines use computer spiders to go through the internet and index the words
on each page (and the meta-tags). The more often your term comes up,
the more relevant the hit you get for it. However, no site has
indexed the entire web; most are at far less than 40% and some far less,
but that shouldn't matter too much with a common topic. |
| A Meta-Search engine. like
Mamma, searches many
different sites all at the same time, thereby helping you to avoid going
to a lot of different sites. There are two problems with these
types of sites. First, you can not use all the search options
outlines below because the engine has to default to the options each site it
searches allows. Second, although many of these engines do delete
redundant hits, many do not, and you end up with far more information
than you really need. Note:
I have been on the
internet for 10 years and do searches for many, many school projects and
never use the meta search engines. |
Search Options
Next, you should know a little bit about search options. If you
cannot find what you are looking for in a regular search, most sites offer an
advanced search options AND/OR offer the ability to narrow down your search
using Boolean operators and specific punctuation.
Here are some
examples...
| AND/OR/NOT (+/-) - These are very useful terms to either narrow
down or scale up a search. Using AND (or + in some
engines) tells the engine to make sure that both the terms appear on the
page before returning a result. Using OR tells the engine that
either term may appear on a page. Using NOT (or - in some
engines) tells the engine that you want the first term (e.g. baseball) but
not the second (e.g. Dodgers). Finally ALWAYS USE ANY AND
TERMS BEFORE OR TERMS. |
| " " Using quotation marks is very easy and very
effective. If you know the exact phrase or terms, these can come
in very handy. |
| Note: Before using any of the options above, check to see
that your search engine supports them AND check to see if your search engine
already has an advanced search function. |
Note: One last thing to keep in mind before we search.
I usually alternate between Yahoo and Northern Light. Why? If I know
what I am looking for, I will go to yahoo first. If I have an uncommon
term or need additional information, I will use Northern Light or another
keyword search engine. In any case, however, before you begin searching,
you should know EXACTLY what the capabilities are of the engine you are using
AND have read the help file or understand how to formulate your searches.
Doing Our Search
PC Magazine in September of 1999 awarded its annual Editor's Choice to
Yahoo for Directory Searching, Northern Light for Research and Hotbot
for All Purpose Searching, so we will start there.
- Try my site first
for search engines, general information, etc. It has a lot of
information that may come in handy.
- Do a search for Neoliberalism on Yahoo.
I am only looking for a definition or for alternate terms
(and/or a Yahoo category which makes all the difference); I found Le
Monde (a well respected French Newspaper, as
well as others. Which site will have the most objective analysis?
(See below for more information on determining a site's validity.)
- I chose the Le Monde site, and I took some information from the
other sites, as well. Some alternate terms for Neoliberalism are
"free market," "austerity programs," "structural
adjustment programs", Reaganomics", "Thatcherism", "supply-side
economics", "monetarism", and "new classical economics".
This will help us to search better.
- Next I am going to use Yahoo again to combine our two terms to
create a search phrase Neoliberalism AND Colombia. I got like 700
hits, which may or may not be good. I decided to add the term
"economy" to the search, making Neoliberalism AND
Colombia AND economy. This time I only got 468, but the first
one is right on topic. Be sure to read the descriptions under
each hit to make sure it's relevant to your topic; if the first 5 or 6 sites
are completely irrelevant, you should consider rephrasing your search terms.
 | The first page that comes up is ???, and it uses one of our
alternate words. Plus, the site looks valid, as well.
In fact, if I go to the home page, and then to the archives, I will find
a couple more articles on my topic. ALWAYS check out the rest
of the site. |
| There are more sites here, as well, that will help with my topic. |
Note: Please make sure you are keeping a bibliography of
your research as you go. Trying to find this information later is very
difficult.
So, am I done? NO. Now I will check the same search terms
in another search site, like Northern Light or Hotbot
Northern Light is good because it is not only has indexed a lot of pages but
it attempts to sort your results by topic and site. I got a lot of hits,
but if I go to the folder "Economics", I find some interesting
documents.
Note: I will always open up a lot of windows to display the
results of my search and close them quickly if the page doesn't help. As
well, I will do a word search within each document, if it is long, to see just
exactly where my search terms are located.
Check out my Research Workshop, Needles
in Haystacks, for more specific information.
|
