Summary

• Keywords: The most important factor in doing successful online searches is selecting good keywords to use as search terms.
  
  
• Boolean Operators
  - AND narrows your search. All the words must be found.
  - OR broadens your search. Any of the words may be found.
  
  
• Phrase Searching: Keywords that are multiple words. Enclose these in quotation marks.
  
  
• Truncation: Searches for variations on a word by adding an asterisk at the end of the root word.
  
  
• Nesting: Combines types of searches. Use parentheses to combine AND and OR searches.
  
  

  If You Want More Information on Searching Believe it or not, we’ve covered just the basics. If you want to really become a good web searcher, there are many online tutorials that explain more advanced techniques. Write this one down and try it later if you’re interested. "Bare Bones 101" http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/bones.shtml

  
  There are many kinds of search engines. Some search the entire web, others search specific online sources, such as library catalogs and databases.

 

Now that you know some searching tricks, it's time to move on to evaluating what you find.