The Internet for Graduate Students

Effective Searching

Before going to the Internet
BRAINSTORM good search keywords

Before you begin your research, think of your topic in terms of individual concepts. List keywords that identify the different concepts.

For example, if your topic is the effects of alcohol on driving reaction time, you might consider the following keywords: alcohol, drunk driving, dui, reaction time, psychomotor skills.

Before going to the Internet
ANALYZE your topic to decide where to begin

Does your topic... 
  • have distinctive words or phrases?  eg. "drunk driving"
  • have multiple concepts that you would like to combine to get your results? e.g. alcohol and driving and "reaction time". 
  • have synonymous, equivalent terms, or variant spellings or endings that need to be included?  eg. "drunk driving" or dui or "driving under the influence".
  • seek an overview or cover a broad topic? eg. "Alcohol"

 

Next, pick the right internet tool

With the right internet tool ...
  • If you have a distinctive or word or phrase,  enclose it in ""  eg. "drunk driving" using a search engine such as Google
  • If you have a complex search where you want to combine multiple concepts,  Choose search engines that let you combine terms to narrow your search using Boolean AND or +. A good choice would be Alta Vista or Hotbot.
  • If you have synonyms, equivalent terms, or variants choose search engines with Boolean OR. Both Alta Vista and Hotbot allow for this searching strategy.
  • If you are seeking an overview, use subject directories.

Review a list of complete search engine comparisons to determine which search engine to pick

 

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Last Updated:  06/25/2002
mjp