Web research

• Google, Google Scholar and Google Books.

Google

Google is the best Web search tool for serious purposes. It is easy to use, indexes more of the Web than any other search engine and offers a range of useful features.

Basic searching

The Google home page is at http://www.google.com.

To perform a basic search, just enter your keywords in the Search Box and click on the Google Search button.

Google then displays a list of Web pages which match your keywords. With Google, you don't need to use the Boolean operator AND or the + sign. Google inserts an AND between keywords automatically. To search for a phrase, put the words in quotation marks (eg "cathy freeman").

By clicking in the check box next to pages from Australia, you can restrict your search to Australian content.

Modifying your search

Usually you start your Google search by using one or two keywords. If this process results in too many hits, you will need to narrow your search by adding additional keywords to the terms in the Search box. At other times, you need to exclude a term. To do this, you use the - (minus) operator.

To find pages about the comic book villain known as the Penguin, while excluding sites about Antarctic wildlife, you can use the search penguin -antarctica.

Using OR

Note that the OR operator must be in uppercase.

It is possible to combine the use of quotation marks and the OR operator. For example, to search for pages on organisational behaviour (Australian/English spelling) or organizational behavior (US spelling), you can enter the following search: "organisational behaviour" OR "organizational behavior".

Restricting your search using site: operator

You can restrict a search to a particular location on the Web (site). Do this by entering your keywords followed by the word "site" and a colon followed by the Web address.

For example, to find information about archaeology on the UNE site, enter the search archaeology site:www.une.edu.au.

You can use this trick to limit your search to particular countries (eg .uk) ular domains (eg .com).

Restricting your search by format

Google allows you to search for documents in different formats. These include Word files (.doc), PowerPoint files (.ppt), Excel spreadsheets (.xls) and publications in Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf). This feature can be particulary useful when you need to find specific sorts of information.

By restricting your search to PDFs, you will often improve the quality of your results. The PDF format is often used for academic or official documents.

To find Adobe Acrobat files on e-commerce, you can type: e-commerce filetype:pdf.

Using Google Scholar

Google Scholar allows you to run a Web search which is restricted to high-quality, scholarly literature.

Watch the video Using Google Scholar to discover how to make this resource work for you.

If you are off-campus, go to Google Scholar by going to the Library home page, clicking on the Google tag. Enter your search terms and then click on Search. You will be taken to Google Scholar.

If you are using Google Scholar from the UNE campus or via the link on the Library home page, you will find that Google Scholar now includes two new types of links:

• Full-Text @ UNE: Click on this link and you should go straight to the full-text of the article. This link indicates that the article is in a journal to which we subscribe.
• UNE Find It: Click on this link and a new window will appear. In this window, you will see options for finding full-text. If the item is from a journal we hold in paper, you can search the catalogue to see if we have the issue in question.

In a few instances you will also see other links, such as ProQuest Fulltext (below the search result) or a domain name (to the right). Clicking on these links may also take you to the full-text.

Using Google Books

Google Books is an excellent means of searching for new books on a topic and sampling their contents before you buy them or put in an document delivery request.

You can go to Google Books on the Web at http://books.google.com or use the search tool on the Library home page.

Google Books will display a list of books which include your keywords in their contents. Click on the book title to view the page where your keyword or phrase appears.

The first time you use Google Books, you may need to follow the prompts to set up a Google Account. It only takes a few moments and there is no charge.

When viewing the contents of a book, you will see the Search in this book box on the right side of your screen.

You can enter keywords or phrases in this book to search the full-text of the book.

Summary

This module has dealt with the following points:

• using Google.
• using Google Scholar and Google Books.