Advanced Information Searching Tips

Developed by Gina Haycock, Librarian
For Instructor, Valerie Ehrlich
November 2006

Subject Vs. Keyword Searching

Subject Heading:
A word or phrase from a controlled vocabulary which is used to describe the subject of a document. The most commonly used subject headings in libraries are the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). These are terms used to describe the article. The actual terms may or may not appear in the article itself.

Finding Subject Headings:

• Library of Congress Subject Headings ( 5 vols.)
              Online Library of Congress Subject Headings

• See References in Databases

• Subject Headings, sometimes called descriptors, as a result of a database search.

Key Word:
The most important or main, word or words in your topic. These are words most likely to be in the article itself.

Finding Key Words:

• Analyze Your Thesis Statement.

• Find synonyms in thesauri and dictionaries
          Online Thesauri : http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/thesauri

• Glean words from preliminary articles or subject encyclopedias.      
                             

Topic Searching Worksheet:*

Make a complete statement for your topic.

Pre-Searching Analysis:

1. What unique words, distinctive names, abbreviations, or acronyms are associated with your topic?

2. Can you think or societies, organizations, or groups that might have information on your subject via their pages?

3. What other words are likely to be in any web documents on your topic?

4. Do any of the words, in #1,#2,or #3 belong in phrases or strings-- together in a certain order, like a cliché?

5. For any of the terms in #4, can you think of synonyms, variant spellings, or equivalent terms you would also accept in relevant documents?

6. Can you think of any extraneous or irrelevant documents these words might pick up?

7. What broader terms could your topic be covered by?

*This worksheet was created by Joe Barker in 2004 and is available in PDF format from the U. C. Berkeley Library Web Site:  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/form.pdf

Recommended Search Engines:

Google Advanced Scholar

• Searches diverse sources

• Finds papers, abstracts and citations

• Ranks articles by full text of article and how often  the article has been cited in other scholarly literature.

Ask.com Advanced Search

• Allows you to narrow your search with term(s) you specify or exact terms you specify. You can specify term(s) to include or exclude from your search.

• Allows you to specify where your search terms appear: Anywhere on the page, In page title, or In URL.

• Allows you to search for your term(s) ONLY within a particular domain. For example, if you ONLY want to search within www.microsoft.com you would use this option.

• Allows you to search for your term(s) ONLY within Web sites that appear in a particular language, such as German or Spanish. You can select one language at a time.

• Allows you to search for your term(s) ONLY within Web sites from a particular country. For example, if you ONLY want to search within Web sites in Netherlands or Web sites in Italy you would select this filter.

• Allows you to search for your term(s) ONLY within Web sites that have been updated within a certain amount of time. (e.g. last week).

Clusty

•  Provides an excerpt from the web site that helps describe it.

•  Drop down menu in the left hand corner will divide all the web sites by their domains.   

•  Major topic is grouped into folders of sub-topics, making the topic easier to explore.

•  News tab allows the viewer to search the latest news by topic as well as breaking down the topics and the news stories into topical folders.     
        

Subject Specific Search Engines:

Healthline

• Searches the top health sites on the Web

• Retrieves related search terms developed by doctors and physician specialists

• Provides doctor-reviewed information as well as news on the topic

FirstGov Search

• Provides free electronic access to  information produced by the Federal Government. The information provided on this site is the official, published version and the information retrieved from GPO Access can be used without restriction, unless specifically noted.

• Provides a search by topic box.

Scirus

• Searches over 250 million science-specific web pages.

• Retrieves  reports, journal articles, and peer-reviewed journal articles.

For additional recommended search engines and tips, click on the link: Library Guides: Recommended Search Engines and Searching Techniques.

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This page was created November 2006. This page was last updated: 04/25/2008
For questions and comments, please mail to:  ginah@cos.edu