Tutorial – Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet
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The information professionals at the University of California at Berkeley recommend a graduated approach to Web searching [46] . Here's their stepwise sequence of steps to follow, which we generally endorse for beginning searchers:
- Before you begin, learn how to analyze your topic and formulate your query
- As a first pass, use a metasearcher using phrases and a relatively simple query formulation
- As a second pass, pick the specific search engines with the specific features that best support your current query
- As a third pass, consider directories that might contain references to comprehensive sites in your specific topic area
- As a fourth pass, consider specialized search engines
- Finally, use major search engines with full-Boolean logic applying the rules and lessons we've offered in this tutorial.
As you gain experience, you can begin cutting out the middle steps. By the time you're doing real heavy lifting with your queries, you really only need spend some time first getting your query right and then cutting to the bottom line with a full Boolean search using phrases and three or so concepts linked through the AND operator and multiple search engines.
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