How well you search your topic and the way you search it is very important to developing your idea. Whether you decide to use the Internet or online periodical and article databases, using search engines is the fastest possible way to retrieve information on a variety of subjects or topics.Effectively Searching Your TopicTo effectively search your topic, first you need to clearly define it. Write a clear, short sentence that summarizes your search topic. In other words, say what you want to find your information on. Example: I would like to write about the increasing problem of teenage pregnancy in the United States.Having summarized your topic, pick out the keywords that best describe your concept and that make up your search topic. In the case of the above example, three concepts reflect the main idea of your paper: teenage, pregnancy, and United States. Using these terms, you want to enter these exact words to search your topic on various search engines or online databases. Your search results will list every available Web page or document featuring your three terms in their description. The sources listed will include links to each described Web site. By reviewing the summary of the Web sites listed, you can visit those sites that seem relevant and determine if they apply to your subject or not. (Note: Often, sites will contain links to other related Web sites and resources that you also can review).When searching your topic, remember this: No search engine covers everything online. They allow you to search for different things in different ways, and they all produce different results. That is because search engines index only portions of the Internet or, for electronic databases, certain kinds of periodicals, and not necessarily the same pages or publications. Therefore, if you can't find what you are looking at one site or one database, it's important to try another.In both cases, most search engines produce comprehensive and relevant results based on the keywords that appear in the context of your field of inquiry. Others produce results in the order of popularity by the number of other sites linked to a site, or the popularity of the linking sites on that particular search engine, or by relevancy. This is mostly the case with Internet search engine sites.Options for SearchingGoogle (www.google.com) is by far the best search engine on the Web today for finding leading sites on a particular topic. Pages listed first are the ones that other sites link to most often and, unlike other search engines, Google stores Web pages in its database, allowing you to see expired pages that otherwise would not be available. Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) is another popular search engine site. It indexes pages by topic, producing a list of links appropriate to your topic. To narrow your search for a specific time period, Hot Bot (www.hotbot.com) is another great choice. Using its advance search, you can specify date limits with your search like "in the last month" or "in the last three months," so your search won't produce a list of sites that are irrelevant to your topic.Other places to start your search are Excite (www.excite.com), Lycos (www.lycos.com), and Northern Light (www.northernlight.com), which rank sites by relevancy, or AltaVista (www.altavista.com), which allows you to state your search in the form of a question.If you don't find what you want using a single search engine, then try one of the metasearch engines. They simultaneously search through multiple search engines, directories, or other Web collections for documents related to your subject. Leaders in this category include AlltheWeb (www.alltheweb.com), Ask Jeeves (www.ask.com), Dogpile (www.dogpile.com), Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com), and Webcrawler (www.webcrawler.com). (For a complete roundup of search engines, metasites, and search directories, see Chapter 15.)Besides using Internet search engines, if you decide to try online databases at your library, you no doubt will have a variety of choices from which you can search full-text books, newspapers, magazines, and journals on virtually any subject or topic. These licensed databases feature articles on current events, individual and specific subjects, and social and controversial topics that all may be instrumental in helping you search for a topic. They include Academic Search Elite, CQ Researcher, InfoTrac, Issues and Controversies Opposing Viewpoints, and many others. (For a complete list of databases, see Chapter 7, "Electronic Databases.")Methods of SearchingIn the beginning, when searching your topic using either Web search engines or electronic databases, problems may arise from matching the keywords of your searches with what is used in search engine or database. Applying many proven techniques will alleviate this problem in your quest to find an appropriate topic and plenty of information about it. Two common methods of searching are:1. Phrase Searching. Phrase searching requires you to use a proper name or distinct phrase enclosed in double quotations (for example: "affirmative action," "mental health organizations," or "John Ritter.") Before commencing with your search, you need to think of the proper name, phrase, or organization that you want to search to direct you to Web pages or documents most associated with your subject or topic.2. Boolean Searching. The Boolean method allows you to use common words with many meanings and contexts with what are called "search connectors," such as AND, OR, or NOT, to achieve the best search results. (Most major search engines, such as AlltheWeb, Google, and many others, put AND between words by default.)Adding AND to your keywords will limit your search to the topic you have defined. Let's say you want to research "censorship" and "media." By combining these keywords with AND (censorship AND media) in your search, you would retrieve Web pages or documents containing those identical words. The same would apply if your topic is teenage pregnancies. Simply by connecting "teenagers" and "pregnancies" with AND, your search will retrieve only specific records found in that search engine's database containing those words.Unlike AND, using OR in combination with your keywords will actually broaden your search and result in more "hits" that mention either word. In this case, if your subject this time is automobile emissions and pollution, to retrieve the most documents related to your subject and mentioning those words, you would search your subject thusly: automobiles OR emissions OR pollution.Less popular than other search connectors is NOT. Combining NOT with your keywords will actually exclude certain concepts and terms from your search, and thus exclude certain documents not containing the specified term. For example: advertising NOT television. Using this method, the search engine will retrieve only those documents that mention "advertising" and not television. One major problem with NOT as a search connector is that it may discard articles that are important. Therefore, you may want to restrict your usage of OR if this handicaps your search for material.In addition to phrase or Boolean searching, you can apply a variety of other proven methods to effectively search your topic, namely:1. Nested Searches. A nested search is another technique often used for searching a topic. It combines the use of AND and OR in the same search statement. Unlike search connectors, nested searches use parentheses to enclose the "or" part of the search. If cloning is your topic and you want to examine the ethical considerations and legal ramifications, your nested search statement would be cloning and (morals or laws). The results of your search will focus on any document featuring this combination of words.2. Truncated Searches. A truncated search, a second common method, uses an asterisk (*) symbol to retrieve any variation of your topic search. For example, using our previous topic, "cloning," by adding an asterisk at the end ("clon*"), you would find everything in that search engine's database with that root word, such as "cloning" and "clones."3. Subject Heading or Descriptor Searches. The final search method uses subject headings or descriptors commonly contained in library catalogs or electronic databases. These databases apply a unique set of subject headings, such as Library of Congress Subject Headings (a classification system for books, references, periodicals, and so on), that describes each item in its database, from A to Z—(for example, "Animals" or "Sports." Subject headings often differ from database to database, so knowing the right subject headings will make your search more precise. Familiarizing yourself with the subject headings or descriptors used by search engines and how to use them in your search will help you to uncover many more relevant documents and narrow your search, if needed.In the meantime, start by doing a keyword search using words that best describe your topic to see what subject headings or descriptors work. Next, browse through your search results and make a list of the subjects or descriptors found in your Web pages or documents that more precisely identify your subject or concept. Redo your search using the new subjects or descriptors that you identified.
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