Short presentation on simple techniques and resources to supercharge your search. In short, how to find twice the number of high quality resources in half the time. Topics cover include: boolean operators, truncation, phrase searching, and date limiters. Techniques for escaping the Google "filter bubble" and strategies for dealing with too much or too little information are also discussed.

1. SUPERCHARGE YOUR SEARCH
RESULTS
MATTHEW VON HENDY

2. WHAT WE WILL COVER:
• 5 searching tips and techniques
• 3 search and full-text tools (Google Scholar, Scirus, Mendeley)
• A few Google tips
• Strategies for dealing with too much/too little information
• Focus on open access, high quality resources

3. TIP 1 -- ADVANCED SEARCH FUNCTION –
USE IT!
Enables you to search more efficiently
Gives you more control over your search

4. BOOLEAN OPERATORS
• Allow you to combine different phrases
• And, or, not
• Cats and dogs, cats or dogs, cats not dogs

6. TRUNCATION-• The truncation symbol is an asterisk *
• Allows you to find any word that starts with that root
• For example, evaluat* would find evaluator, evaluators, evaluation
• Great way to find plurals

8. OTHER USEFUL SEARCH TIPS-• Date limiters
• Allow you to pick specific dates
for your search
• Exact phrase searching
• ―Double quotation marks‖
• In the search examples, we will
look for ―evaluation metric*‖

9. GOOGLE SCHOLAR
• Subset of Google search focus on academic resources
• Journal articles, books, conference papers

13. SCIRUS
• www.scirus.com
• Search engine for scientific and social science content
• Use Advanced Search

17. MENDELEY
• www.mendeley.com
• Started as a tool to manage references
• Content is downloaded by scholars themselves
• Now a good place to search and find full-text
• Health science focus

21. GOOGLE RULES THE
SEARCH WORLD!
•
Most popular search engine
•
The #1 resource used by evaluators to conduct professional
research
•
Google filters search results based on your previous
searches

22. SITE OR DOMAIN SPECIFIC GOOGLE
SEARCHING
• Limit your Google search to a specific site or domain
• Search term site: or search term domain:
• Example:
• Updates site:eval.org

24. ESCAPE THE GOOGLE FILTER BUBBLE..

25. TRY THE SAME SEARCH IN ALTERNATE
SEARCH ENGINES AND SEE WHAT YOU
GET:
• DuckDuckGo www.duckduckgo.com
• Blekko www.blekko.com
• Empty your cache and erase your search history

26. TOO MANY SEARCH RESULTS..
•
•
•
Use boolean operators– and, not
Date limiters – narrow the time frame
If available—use other filters–
For example—geography, source types, language
Try describing what you are searching for in more specific terms—
who, when, where, what and how

27. TOO FEW SEARCH RESULTS…
• Check your spelling of search terms
• Use boolean operator – or -• Can other words be used to describe your search subject—
For example– child – youth, youngster, kid
Are you using the right resource to search?

28. QUESTIONS???

29. THANK YOU AND HAVE A GREAT
CONFERENCE!!

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