Search Strategies

How to get the best results from your search.

Page contents

• Planning your search
• Refining your search
• Boolean searching
• Other operators and search aids
• Analyse your information

Planning your search

Think about the keywords from your assignment. Consider possible synonyms, alternative spellings, plurals and other endings.

What sort of information are you looking for?

• scholarly or popular information?
• electronic versions of books, newspapers, journals or other resources?
• simple facts or complex discussion?

How much information do you need?

• a simple answer from one site?
• a range of material from several different sites?

Refining a search

If you have too many hits:

• Add other terms or concepts (see Boolean Searching)
• Search a narrower concept (For example if you started with the term 'education', try 'special education' or 'K-12 education')
• Use a combination subject directory and search engine like Yahoo) where your keyword search is limited to sites in a particular subject area.

If you have too few hits:

• Try using a broader term or concept
• Broaden the search by linking or using synonyms
• Check your spelling
• Try a different Search Engine. If you want NZ information try starting with a NZ search engine such as SearchNZ or a NZ directory like Te Puna Web Directory or Access NZ (See the University of Waikato Library Internet Search Tools page for access to these and other search engines.)
• Think about who would have made the sort of information you want available on the Internet; not all information you want is available.
• Ask your Librarian for help.

Boolean Searching

Using Boolean operators (AND OR NOT) will help to focus and define your search by specifying the logical relationship among your keywords and terms. They can help broaden (increase) and narrow (decrease) search results.
Boolean searching is an important skill to learn; you'll need these operators to effectively search the library catalogue, electronic databases and the Internet.
 
AND narrows a search because ALL TERMS must be present in each hit.

If you enter the following search:

Each hit should contain both the word 'education' and the word 'Waikato'

Adding 'Waikato' to 'education' is a good strategy to use when you only need to limit your search to information about education in the Waikato. Education is such a broad subject that a search with just 'education' as the search word it is likely to result in hundreds of hits, most of which will be irrelevant if you are only looking for Waikato related information.

OR widens a search because each hit will contain either 'education' or it will contain 'Waikato'. These terms may or may not appear in the same record. If you enter the following search:

all the records containing the word 'education' will be retrieved, as well as all the records containing the term 'Waikato'

The best way to use OR is when you want to make sure that you cover synonyms. Have a look at the following two examples:

education OR teaching OR schooling

bike OR cycle OR bicycle

NOT narrows a search by excluding records containing specified words. If you enter the following search:

Education NOT Waikato

The word 'education' must be present in the records retrieved, but the word 'Waikato' must not be present. Use the NOT operator judiciously as you may exclude relevant records inadvertently. (Some search engines use AND NOT).

Other Operators and Search Aids

NEAR tells the search engine to find records with specified words near to each other.

It is common practice with most search engines to put a search phrase in brackets or inside quotation marks, e.g. "University of Waikato" will find results containing the whole phrase, not just individual words. Check the help page of each search engine you use for specific information.

Use the truncation symbol to find variant endings, e.g. cyber? will find cyber or cyberspace and quotation marks around a phrase. e.g. “social relationships.” Some search engines allow you to select truncation as an option, whereas others may use symbols including * or $ or +. It is recommended that you refer to the search engines user guide for more information on truncation.

Analyse your information

Whatever tool you use to find your information, ultimately it is the quality of the information that is important, rather than how much information you retrieve. Learn to analyse your information:

Scope

Does it cover what you need it to cover, remembering that a great deal of Internet information is fairly recent and American?

Currency

Has the site been updated recently? Is the information up to date?

Comprehensiveness

How complete is the coverage, are some areas more detailed than others?

Authority

Who published the web page and why should you listen to them?

Have fun with your searching. Experiment, practice and ask the library for help when you need it!

The search engines and directories mentioned here are all available from the University of Waikato Library search page.