KYVL: Information Skills Tutorial, Unit 1: Beginning Techniques for Searching the Web

KYVL: Information Skills Tutorial, Unit 1: Beginning Techniques for Searching the Web

Using Search Engines	Information Skills Tutorial Unit 1: Web Basics
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Introduction

Unit 1 Contents

Topic: Beginning Techniques for Searching the Web

Lesson

To construct a search statement or a search for a search engine, use some of the same techniques that you would for searching online catalogs or article databases:

Define your topic. Think of alternative words or phrases for your topic.
Combine the words into a search statement.

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Example

Natural Language

Most search engines will support a natural language search. This means that you can type in the question just as it occurs to you – see the following examples:

Find inexpensive hotels in Altantic City
I need help with a homework project on statistics for gun deaths

What the search engine will actually look for:

inexpensive hotels Atlantic City
statistics gun deaths

Notice that the search engine selects the main words from the request and searches for those.

If you wanted to try the second search again you could try alternative words for

gun – which might be rifle or firearm.

deaths – for which you might use murders or killings.
The theme used for examples throughout this tutorial is the firearms debate.
Unit 1: 6 of 15

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Last Updated: 04/19/2000
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