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Select databases
that best suit your search needs.
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Formulate a question.
Perform a search of combined free-text and fixed-vocabulary terms.
Free text is any text that appears in the database except for common
articles and conjunctions such as "the" and "by". Fixed-vocabulary terms
are used as general descriptors for search records. For example, a search
could combine the fixed-vocabulary term birds-American with the free-text
word habitat to locate information on the habitat of birds in America.
Appropriate search vocabulary can often determine the success of a search.
If a plant, for example, is ony indexed by its scientific name, it is
necessary to know the scientific name in order to retrieve relevant
information on the plant.
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Use Boolean Logic to Strengthen Your Search
Indentify words that describe your question. Identify likely synonyms for
each word. Group the synonyms using the boolean or. Combine the
or sets of
synonyms with the boolean and.
Boolean Logic can be illustrated by the following scenario-->>
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Reading a Site
The use of the Internet has increased more than tenfold in the past three
years. The promise of a large audience has also introduced a mass
marketing aspect to the Internet that didn't exist previously. There are
three basic questions you may want to consider when looking at sites:
Who produced the information for the Internet site?
Who sponsors the Internet site? Is it a business, an educational
organization, a government agency?
Are documents properly cited?
Has the information been updated or is it outdated?
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