Tips for Internet Searching

Is what you're looking for likely to be on the Internet? Despite commercials that imply that everything is on the Internet, many things, especially copyrighted, in-depth materials or historical materials, are either:

1. Not there!
   • Not there yet
   • Have disappeared (average "lifespan" of a web site is 90 days)
   • Are only available by subscription.
     • Many databases that the library provides "free" are actually paid for by subscription (EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and so on).
2. Under a different term, subject, or name. Do you have a specific subject in mind? It pays to develop or generate a list of alternate terms or synonyms, to get a more comprehensive set of sites retrieved, for example: (greenhouse effect OR global warming or ozone depletion). Or you may need to be very specific to limit your results, for example: greenhouse effect and domain:org would retrieve pages about the greenhouse effect published by nonprofit organizations.
3. There, but not reliable. You can tell something about the provider of the Internet site from the domain name, in the sense that " -----.edu" is a site provided by an educational institution, such as a university; "-----.org" is a site provided by a non-profit or not-for-profit organization, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; "-----.gov" is a site sponsored by a government body; "-----.com" is a commerically provided site. This does not mean that everything with an .edu tag is educational, or that sites with a .com tag won't be useful for research, it is just one way to begin to evaluate the site you are viewing.
   
4. There, but not available from the search engine you are using. Each search engine covers a subset of the web, and while there is some overlap, you may want to try several different ones.
   

Each of the search engines uses slightly different ways to search, and each has a way or ways to search most effectively. Help screens are available at most search engine sites.

Many of the search engines allow the use of AND, OR, and NOT, (or +,-) between terms to focus a search; some allow the use of proximity operators such as with, near, or adj (adjacent) and so on. Some use quotation marks to bind phrases together.

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