FTS: Cultivating Practice: Unleashing the Creative: Web Research

Ask yourself these questions to figure out where to look for the information you need:

• Whose voices are most likely to be discussing the issue?
• How would information on the issue likely be communicated or shared?
• What are the best ways to access information about the issue? Is information available through library resources? It it available on federal, state, or local websites? Are there individuals to whom you can reach out for more information about the issue and to see if they have any additional ideas of people or sources you can consult?

Librarians are happy to help you brainstorm what type of information you need, who might collect or disseminate it, and how you might access it. Just Ask Us!

In addition to limiting a search by date, use these tricks.

• You can limit a search by domain: For example, to limit a search to government sites add site:.gov to your search.
• To exclude a word from a search, put a minus sign in front of it: virus -computer
• If you aren’t sure of a word within a phrase, put a * in its place: where there is no * the people perish
• You can limit a search to kind of file by adding filetype:pdf (or pptx or  xls or docx or . . .)
• If you want to search for information about a site without all of your results from the site, you can exclude it from your search: breitbart -site:breitbart.com
• Google has a number of additional features on its advanced search screen, including limits by language, region and file type

Image courtesy of stuck in customs

The first question to ask is: should I use the web for this project or not? The web is great for some topics, but is not a good place to find literary criticism, scholarly analysis of social issues, or the kind of broad overview written by a noted scholar that a really good specialized encyclopedia can provide. In addition to its print resources, libraries often pay for resources that are accessed through the web; these aren't indexed in search engines. Some "free" sites for magazines and newspapers charge for using their archives; library databases offer them at no charge. Consider these steps as you plan a search:

• Think about what you need and which key words might describe it.
• Think about what organizations or government entities might provide information on your topic.
• Use what you find to refine your search (such as the name of an organization or a government agency).
• Limit a search to a given domain by including it in your search statement.For example, autism site:.gov will search for autism on government Websites. 
• Limit a search by date using the "show search tools" link to left of your Google results
• Turn to Google Scholar or library databases for research-based sources.

Use these strategies as you sort through your results:

• Shorten a URL to get to a root page by deleting everything after the first slash.
• Follow links to find out about the page's author or sponsoring agency.
• Examine the URL to see where it originated. For example, URLs containing .k12 are hosted at elementary and secondary schools, so may be intended for a young audience; those ending in .gov are government agencies, so tend to be "official" information. Domains may include information about what country the site is from: .au for Australia, .uk for United Kingdom, and so on