Knowledge Handler

Information Sources & Information Sifting Techniques

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Location: Cleveland, Ohio, United States

I am a retired librarian, most recently serving at Indiana Wesleyan University's Cleveland Education Center.

Friday, December 31, 2004

Know Your Research Tools

Research tools differ in what information they index for searching. Tools such as Infotrac by default do a keyword search just on the title, any assigned subject headings, and any annotation. A keyword search for a word or phrase can be expanded to include the entire text of the document by using a check box, but it is an extra step that is often ommitted.

Google and similar search tools may report that millions of articles contain a search term, but these tools typically index only the first few hundred matches for retreival - the remainder are difficult or impossible to retrieve.

To learn more about the limitations of a tool, look at its "Help" and any "Advanced Search" page. A good website for learning the nuances of search engines is www.searchenginewatch.com - this site is written for both the searcher and the marketer who wants to advance their placement in search engine results, so it provides information on indexing and data retreival.
-DD

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