SUPERCHARGE YOUR SEARCH RESULTS

MATTHEW VON HENDY

WHAT WE WILL COVER:

• 5 searching tips and techniques

• 3 search and full-text tools (Google Scholar, Scirus, Mendeley)

• A few Google tips

• Strategies for dealing with too much/too little information

• Focus on open access, high quality resources

TIP 1 -- ADVANCED SEARCH FUNCTION – USE IT!

Enables you to search more efficiently

Gives you more control over your search

BOOLEAN OPERATORS

• Allow you to combine different phrases

• And, or, not

• Cats and dogs, cats or dogs, cats not dogs

TRUNCATION--

• The truncation symbol is an asterisk *

• Allows you to find any word that starts with that root

• For example, evaluat* would find evaluator, evaluators, evaluation

• Great way to find plurals

OTHER USEFUL SEARCH TIPS--

• Date limiters

• Allow you to pick specific dates for your search

• Exact phrase searching

• “Double quotation marks”

• In the search examples, we will look for “evaluation metric*”

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

• Subset of Google search focus on academic resources

• Journal articles, books, conference papers

SCIRUS

• www.scirus.com

• Search engine for scientific and social science content

• Use Advanced Search

MENDELEY

• www.mendeley.com

• Started as a tool to manage references

• Content is downloaded by scholars themselves

• Now a good place to search and find full-text

• Health science focus

GOOGLE RULES THE SEARCH WORLD!• Most popular search engine

• The #1 resource used by evaluators to conduct professional research

• Google filters search results based on your previous searches

SITE OR DOMAIN SPECIFIC GOOGLE SEARCHING

• Limit your Google search to a specific site or domain

• Search term site: or search term domain:

• Example:

• Updates site:eval.org

ESCAPE THE GOOGLE FILTER BUBBLE..

TRY THE SAME SEARCH IN ALTERNATE SEARCH ENGINES AND SEE WHAT YOU GET:

• DuckDuckGo www.duckduckgo.com

• Blekko www.blekko.com

• Empty your cache and erase your search history

TOO MANY SEARCH RESULTS..

• Use boolean operators– and, not

• Date limiters – narrow the time frame

• If available—use other filters–

For example—geography, source types, language

Try describing what you are searching for in more specific terms—who, when, where, what and how

TOO FEW SEARCH RESULTS…

• Check your spelling of search terms

• Use boolean operator – or --

• Can other words be used to describe your search subject—

For example– child – youth, youngster, kid

Are you using the right resource to search?

QUESTIONS???

THANK YOU AND HAVE A GREAT CONFERENCE!!

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