Lori Van Order – SLM521 – Summer 2003 – Search Tips Elective

 

 

Searching Made Simple

 

 

BE SPECIFIC!

Make sure you are using specific terms in your search. For example, if you are doing research on the bottle-nosed dolphin, you need to write

bottle-nosed dolphin,

not just dophin.

 

CHECK SPELLING!

Please remember to check the spelling of the word that you want to search! There are dictionaries in the back of the room you can use to look up your word. If you write wafle instead of waffle, then your search will not work.

 

USE QUOTATION MARKS!

If you have more than one word, and you want the two words to be together in your results, then you can use quotations marks to help. For example, if you are searching the word hot dog, you will get results with the word hot by itself and the word dog by itself. If you use quotation marks to write “hot dog”, then your search will find only results with the words “hot dog” together.

 

USE + SIGN!

If you want to do a search on two words at the same time, you can use a + sign. For example, if you want to search strawberry and jam, you can write strawberry+jam and your results will be for both words.

 

USE – SIGN!

In just the opposite way, if you want to do a search but you don’t want a certain word to come up, then you can use the minus sign. For example, if you do the search on strawberry and you don’t want the word jam with it, you can write strawberry-jam, and your results should be for strawberry only.

 

USE KID SEARCH ENGINES!

Make sure you are using the search engines that we use in class. That means you can use:

 

www.yahooligans.com   OR   www.lycoszone.com

 

 

Finally—

HAVE FUN!! J