Keywords

Keywords are important when using the internet for research.  Search engines are keyword based, which means some words may get tons of hits while other words aren’t going to get many results.  One way to make sure you get what you need out of the net is to come up with a list of words or short phrases that go along with your topic.  If one keyword doesn’t get any results you have back up words that can help to get what you need.

Using Phrases

Search engines will pick up some phrases but if your search terms are too long, you won’t get accurate results.  Try to shorten up your search phrases to no more than 2-3 words.  There are also several words that can hinder the search engine from getting good results, these are A, AN, and THE, try to take these words out when you are searching, it can help to weed out some of the bad websites.  If you need a specific phrase in your search put the phrase in “” this will tell the search engine that it has to be found in your results as it is.

Narrowing a Search

Using the words AND, OR, and NOT will also help to reduce or get more results, especially if you are searching for more than one term.  Connecting the terms with one of these words can help to filter more of the results of the search engine or database.

Boolean Search Logic.

When completing a search the terms AND, OR, and NOT can help either broaden or narrow a search.  Below are examples and explanation on how it affects your searches. 

AND- the word AND will limit a search to only websites or documents that have those two words included on it. 

      Example:          stress AND health --> Would narrow search to only documents/websites with both mentioned.

OR- the word OR will broaden a search to documents/websites that contain two keywords as well as ones that contain both.

      Example:          stress OR health --> Would have results that contain one or the other, NOT both terms mentioned.

NOT- the word NOT will reduce a search and limit it only to one term. 

      Example:          stress NOT health --> Would have results with only stress and no mention of health at all. 

Why Use a Database when I can ‘Google’ It?

Google can be a great place to get information (I use it all the time!) but is all the information you find on Google going to be accurate?  This question is one of the problems with using a search engine.  

Anyone can make a website and publish whatever information they would like online.  This can be a problem when you are researching.  Articles that can be found on databases have reliable authors and accurate information on them.  They are paid for by the library and offer a great service for the patrons.  This doesn’t mean that they can’t be biased towards a certain topic but it does insure that the information will be more accurate then just searching the web.