Chapter eleven:

Using the Internet

A. Boolean Logic
B. Noodle Tools
C. Find Articles

A. Finding facts and information with search engines to support your arguments about your topic or for rebuttals about your topic can be aided by using Boolean logic with the search engine.

B.The Noodle Tools - Information Literacy: Search Strategies

C. Finding Articles

Draft I is due Sept 16th and your Final paper is due Sept 30th.
In order to better understand both sides of the argument for your topic use the Boolean operators to search other web sites that may also have relevant information about your subject as well as Noodle Tools.
Combine this information to refine the rough Draft I as well as giving you more to think about for the final arguments in your Final paper.

How to Evaluate a Web Site

The Google Help Desk - How do find things on the internet?


The New Amazon Search Engine - Image search capabilities

    Assignment 1.:

1. How many Pandas are in China?
2. Where is the coldest place on planet earth?
3. How many people live in Iceland?
4. Who is the Chief of the Figi islands?

Before you click on Google to do your search read the Boolean Logic below

Assignment 2.:

1. Use the Noodle Tools to find more information about your subject.

2. Use the Boolean operators discussed below and use them in the Google Search Engine above.

3. Use Find Articles web site

Internet search engines provide access to huge amounts of information. So much information that in order to find what you're looking for, you need to know how to use Boolean operators - British mathematician George Boole's contribution to information retrieval.
Boolean searching is a set of rules and operators which allow you to define exactly how you want your search done.

Boolean searching uses three logical operators:

OR

AND

NOT

• OR tells the search engine to look for either term you give in all the documents and pages it looks at. It is usually used with synonyms (e.g. ship OR boat). The more words you include, the more results you will get. So,
  
  naval OR warfare
  
  will give you any documents or pages that have "naval" or "warfare" somewhere.
  
  
  
• AND tells the search engine to look for any documents or pages that have both (or more) words. The more words you use, the fewer results you will get. So,
  
  naval AND warfare
  
  will only give you results that have both "naval" and "warfare" in them.
  
  
  
• NOT tells the search engine that you don't want one of the words. So,
  
  naval NOT warfare
  
  tells the computer that you don't want anything with the word "warfare" in it.
  
  
  

Some search engines will let you use quotation marks. Quotation marks tell the computer that you are looking for a phrase or group of words exactly as you type it. So,

"naval warfare"will only find results where the words "naval" and "warfare" are right next to each other.

Parenthesis "force" a search engine to do a search in certain order. So,
(naval OR ship OR boat) NOT warfare

will make the search engine sort through the results of "naval OR ship OR boat" first, then delete all the ones that have "warfare."

The best way to use Boolean searching is to combine as many logical operators as possible to try to narrow the search. If this doesn't give enough results, then start taking terms off. Try to think of words that mean the same thing, and things you don't want in your search. Otherwise, a simple search can give hundreds - or thousands - of resultsÉ and that's next to useless.

Chapter ten | Chapter twelve

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