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Applied Searching

Search  Techniques

• Read the on-screen directions and help information 
• Type in lower case unless you need an exact match  -- "pedro pan" 
• Insert most important words first -- "nsu motorcycle"
• Group search phrases using double quotation marks -- "dave matthews band" 
• Use specific, simple, unique search terms -- "Egyptian mythology" 
• Require or eliminate terms or domains using +, - symbols; Boolean operators And, OR  -- +Loudoun +Fairfax +"humane society"
• Limit by domain or file type -- "service learning" +.edu 
• Perform your search using more than one search tool -- 
  a directory - Librarian's Index to the Internet or About.com or Yahoo 
  a search engine - AltaVista or Northern Light or FastSearch
  a metasearch engine - Dogpile or Metacrawler or Mamma
• Utilize one of the organizational aids provided by the search tool to qualify the search, a custom folder (Northern Light) or more like this (Excite)  
  Northern Light "women in afghanistan"  Search results 4, 535. Select Special Collection Documents.  Results 540 items in 306 documents (as of 5/12/2000).
  

      For information contact jegan@nvcc.edu
      Last revision April 07, 2000