DAY 2: TIPS ON SEARCHING WISELY Robert Phipps August

FINDING INFORMATION As you continue in your courses and eventual careers, you frequently will have to locate information. With the resources available through the Internet, it is easier than ever before to find large amounts of information. –This is a double-edged sword: it’s also easy to get buried under too much data. –It’s important to understand that just because the data is available doesn’t mean it is correct. 2

SEARCH ENGINES: PLANNING YOUR SEARCHES To help find data quickly, plan your searches. Be specific and use multiple keywords. –If you are searching for German shepherds in West Virginia, you will get better results using the terms German shepherd and West Virginia than if you just searched using the term dogs. –Try searching for different terms and synonyms. If car doesn’t work, try searching for automobile. 3

SEARCH ENGINES: FINE-TUNING YOUR TERMS Use phrases and quotation marks –“Springfield, Illinois” will return pages that reference only Springfield, Illinois with the words in that specific order. Negative terms –Virus –computer will find pages that mention the word virus but not the word computer. AND and OR queries –Most search engines automatically insert the word AND between phrases (which is why quotation marks are useful) so there is no need to type it in the search engine. OR is useful for searching for more than one term, such as West Virginia University OR WVU. 4

SEARCH ENGINES: STAYING ON-TARGET Google ignores common terms such as where and how, as well as single digits and letters. Searches aren’t case sensitive. Typing aNoThEr pHrAse will give same results as another phrase. To require certain words be in your results, surround them with quotation marks. For example, “dogs” “West Virginia” will require both “dogs” and “West Virginia” be in results that are shown. Use the site command to restrict searches –football site:wvu.edu will return pages that reference football, but only on WVU servers. 5

SEARCH ENGINES: GETTING ADDITIONAL HELP Try using Google’s help features. –The search engine’s help page can be found at and from there, more advanced search tips are available. Most other search engines (Bing, etc.) work similarly to Google.Bing 6

WIKIPEDIA Wikipedia is a free user-edited online encyclopedia at Advantages –Huge volume of information, often on subjects not well-covered elsewhere Disadvantages –Can be edited by anyone –Information can be misleading, biased, or just plain wrong. 7

WIKIPEDIA: EVALUATING ARTICLES What’s the tone of the article? –Any tone other than a professional one increases the likelihood that the article is misleading or biased. When was it last edited? –More recently edited articles are generally more frequently used and more likely to be correct. Citations and references –More citations and references means the article is more likely to be accurate. Like any source, there is no guarantee the information is 100% accurate. 8

WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHOULD I USE IT? You generally shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a sole source for your writing! Initial and general information –Wikipedia is great for giving you general background on a subject. References (at the bottom of the article) –Sources for getting more information. –Also help to verify the information in the Wikipedia article. 9

GOOGLE SCHOLAR Where do I find Google Scholar? – What sources is it looking at? –Includes peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and other scholarly literature. If you’re doing technical research or writing papers for your major, Google Scholar is a good place to look for existing work. 10

GOOGLE SCHOLAR: HOW SHOULD I USE IT? What do I use it for? –Good for finding papers, abstracts, and citations –A great way to search for diverse sources from one place –Provides full-text sources on the web, as well as locates the complete paper in your library What advantages does it offer? –For each piece that it locates, Google scholar shows the title, other papers that have cited the article, related articles, and library links for electronic and physical papers –Allows you to search by title, author, and category, as well as within specific publications 11

LIBRARY DATABASES Visit the WVU Libraries website at –Retrieve peer-reviewed articles in full text –Use the information you find here to look for other sources and articles Use full-text databases, such as LexisNexis –These are good for contemporary, straightforward information Other databases are available at

SOME THINGS TO CONSIDER When researching topics on the web, some things to think about are: –Who is the page’s author? Is the source credible? News sites like will have more accurate information than someone’s blog. –How current is the information? Pages that haven’t been updated since 1998 are less likely to have accurate information. –Search engines are unfiltered and thus return all results. These may include results that aren’t objective or even accurate. Think about the possible biases that could be portrayed and whether the information and data is authentic. –You can double-check your information against multiple sources if you are unsure of their authenticity. 13

LEARN MORE Google Inside Search Google Search Stories 14