1. Searching 101:
Tips that every college student should know
An Online Tutorial
brought to you by
Pilgrim Library

2. I could tell you all about these
awesome search strategies.
I could go on and on about
how they’re going to save you time
and energy and frustration.
Or I could show you
and let the numbers
speak for themselves.

3. Why you shouldn’t type your
thesis/topic into a search box
Many search engines/databases don’t
understand phrases or sentences

4. Sentences confuse searches
When they don’t understand,
search engines and databases
either give up or try to
compensate by guessing your
keywords for you. Either way,
you’re probably not going to
get the information you want.
This search focused just on Hindu rites and
rituals and didn’t bring back any results about
the American part of our topic.

5. Use keywords instead!
Keywords force you to break down your topic
into more manageable pieces
This makes it easier to search for specific information.
Finding relevant resources will be much easier!
It also makes you synthesize and draw your OWN conclusions.

6. But a single keyword isn’t enough!
One keyword by itself makes for a very broad search.
To be included in the result list, all a website or resource has
to do is mention your keyword one time! There’s simply too
much information out there – we have to be more specific
about what we want to find.

7. How to combine keywords
AND OR
Adds another search criteria Gives the search another option
Decreases the number Increases the number
of search results of search results
Makes the search narrower and Makes the search broader and
more specific more vague
Great for helping you get back Great when you want to use two
results that are relevant synonymous keywords

8. Using “and”
One keyword:
About 1.25 billion results
Two keywords with AND:
1,138,000,000 less than one keyword
Three keywords with AND:
1,248,970,000 less than one keyword
110,970,000 less than two keywords
Four keywords with AND:
1,249,834,000 less than one keyword
111,834,000 less than two keywords
864,000 less than three keywords

9. Using “or”
Keywords alone:
Ritual: 38,300,000
Rite: 33,800,000
Keywords with OR:
65,700,000 more than ritual
70,200,000 more than rite
Keywords alone:
Funny website: 291,000,000
Humorous website: 10,600,000
Keywords with OR:
19,000,000 more than funny website
299,400,000 more than humorous website

10. Why where you search matters:
Number of results
Google:
About 1.25 billion results
Google Scholar:
1,247,730,000 less than Google
Academic Search Complete
Research database:
1,249,774,687 less than Google
2,044,687 less than Google Scholar

11. Why where you search matters:
Quality of results
Wikipedia page vs.
scholarly article Databases and journals
have already done a bit of
evaluation for you: you
can trust that their
information is quality.
When you use a search
engine or Wikipedia, you
have to evaluate your
resources more carefully.

12. Make the Internet work for you
Limit your searches by domain and get back
better results without sorting through junk.
You can tell a search engine that you only want results
from websites with a certain domain (.edu, .org, .gov)
.edu
hosted by an educational institution
(K-12 school or college/university)
.org
hosted by an organization
.gov
hosted by the government
(local, state, or federal)

13. Bring it all together:

14. Congratulations!
You successfully finished the library tutorial:
Searching 101
If you have any questions about this tutorial,
please get in touch with Pilgrim Library or
email adearmond@defiance.edu.

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