Finding Information on the Internet

The Basics The Internet is a computer network. Anyone who has access to a host computer can publish their own documents from this network. The part of this network called the World Wide Web (or just the Web) allows Internet publishers to link to other documents on the network.

The Internet There are many kinds of Internet sites that you might find during the course of a search, sites created by different people or organizations all with different reasons for having a website.

Boolean Searches The word Boolean comes from a British- born Irish mathematician George Boole. Boolean logic helps us search the internet more effectively. –And –Not –Or

Example Let’s say your research question is… Can a healthy diet reduce the risk of cancer? The keywords that capture the two main concepts of the research problem are: cancer and diet

Search When you do a search on the internet, you should type in cancer and diet –This narrows your search so that all key words appear in the results

Search When you get your results, you may find that several of the internet sites recommended deal with skin cancer. You don’t want information about skin cancer. You can use Boolean Logic and type in cancer not skin –This eliminates unwanted words or concepts in the search results

Search When you get your results, you may find that you didn’t get enough results You can use Boolean Logic and type in diet or nutrition –This broadens your results by including any, some, or all of the keywords.

Try it.. Take your research question and use Boolean Logic to search for information on it. Use at least 2 Boolean words and find at least 2 websites about your research topic. Print out a portion of these websites to review later.

Sources ch101/basic01.htmhttp:// ch101/basic01.htm ls/boolean/tutorial.html#