P. F. Anderson: Pro Pages: Search Tips: Tasks

P. F. Anderson: Pro Pages

Tips, Tasks, & Tools: The Eight-fold Path to Right Searching
-- by P. F. Anderson, pfa@umich.edu

Course developed for Enriching Scholarship 2005, May 9-10

Some Search Tasks & Different Ways to Do Them

Search Tips Home | Sections: Tips and Tasks and Tools

Print (Books, Journals, Articles)

Searching for Print in Google

Google currently offers a variety of options for searching in the text of print resources. You may want to compare these results to some of the other options available, such as Google: Book Search or Google: Scholar. Be sure to look at how the search terms display in the search box, and also how the URLs look. You can use any of these as models for your own searches.

Example One: Matrix Metalloproteinases
- Google: Book Search (the service previously known as GooglePrint, to search in books): Search in books for "matrix metalloproteinases"
- compare to:
- Google: Search For Books (original version, to search for books): Search for books about "matrix metalloproteinases"
- compare to:
- Google: Scholar: Search for articles about "matrix metalloproteinases".
Example Two: Cone Beam CT
- Google Web Search: cone beam CT (n=59,900)
- Google: Book Search: cone beam CT (n=201 pages of books)
- Google: Search For Books: cone beam CT (n=610 "books")
- Google: Scholar: cone beam CT (n=1210 articles)
Example Three: Robert Frost
- Google Web Search: Robert Frost (n=7,740,000)
- Google: Book Search: Robert Frost (n=43,600 pages of books)
- Google: Search For Books: Robert Frost (n=2,430,000 "books")
- Google: Scholar: Robert Frost (n=21,000 "articles")
Example Four: Civil War
- Google: Book Search: Civil War
- Google: Search For Books: Civil War
- Google: Scholar: Civil War

Searching for Print in A9

The A9 search engine, from Amazon and friends, offers what librarians call "federated searching" or "metasearching" in web parlance. They have made this configurable by the user with login, with a variety of options ("columns"). Some of the custom options include searching holdings for libraries, and a variety of special databases.

For "cone beam CT", A9 found
- Web: n=5,270
- Books n=21,773
- PubMed: n=108,338
For "Robert Frost", A9 found
- Web: n=673,000
- Books n=60,748
- MAGIC (MSU's Libraries): n=219
- MELVYL (California Digital Library): n=416
- RedLightGreen (RLG): n=360

Searching for Print: Other Strategies

Search your topic normally, but limiting to a site that supplies electronic versions of the type of print resource you want. Here are just a very few examples.

Bartleby: [your term] site:.bartleby.com
FindArticles: [your term] site:.findarticles.com
FreeMedicalJournals: [your term] site:freemedicaljournals.com
HighWire Press: [your term] site:highwire.stanford.edu
iBiblio: [your term] site:.ibiblio.org
The Online Books Page (no fulltext search): [author or title words] site:.onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu
Perseus Digital Library (classical & renaissance texts): [your term] site:.perseus.tufts.edu
Project Gutenberg: [your term] site:gutenberg.org
Scirus, for scientific information only [search directly in site]
Soople (Select: Search in multiple sites at once, choose "Books")

Search collections of recommended academic sources (search directly in site).

Pictures

Searching for a picture of something:
Thumbnails of Web Pages:
- Exalead
- IceRocket
Collections of Image Search Tools:
- FaganFinder: Image Search Engines
- KidsClick: Kid's Image Search Tools
Specialty Image Search Tools (examples):

International Searching & Other Languages

Translate the page you see:
Language tools
- ForeignWord.com
- Langenberg
Search Interface in non-English languages
- SeekItAll.com: English / Espanol / Francais
Search in engines from other countries
- Search Engine Colossus, International Directory of Search Engines
Search in multiple languages:
- Babelplex
Google in other languages and countries:
- Standard URL format:
  - France: http://www.google.fr/
  - Spain: http://www.google.es/
  - Germany: http://www.google.de/
  - Italy: http://www.google.it/
  - United Arab Emirates: http://www.google.ae/
- Common alternate URL format:
  - Korea: http://www.google.co.kr/
  - Thailand: http://www.google.co.th/
  - Venezuela: http://www.google.co.ve/
  - Jersey: http://www.google.co.je/ (In English and French)
- Other URL formats:
  - Brazil: http://www.google.com.br/
  - Canada: http://local.google.ca/
  - China: http://www.google.cn?? - nope ... http://www.google.com/intl/zh-CN/
Yahoo in other countries:
- China: http://cn.yahoo.com/ or http://www.yahoo.com.cn/
- France: http://fr.yahoo.com/
- Germany: http://de.yahoo.com/
- Hong Kong: http://hk.yahoo.com/
- Italy: http://it.yahoo.com/
- Singapore: http://sg.yahoo.com/
- United Kingdom: http://uk.yahoo.com/
Need to know a country code?:
- IANA Root-Zone Whois Information: Index by TLD Code
A9's International Options
- Japan: Hatena, blogdb.jp, etc.
- Italy: TUAIMMOBILIARE, JobCrawler.it, etc.
- Hispanic: LatPro, Pesquisa SAPO, etc.
- German: many technical blogs and other
- China: book search etc.
- Keep checking for more ...
Issues with the international Internet environment

News, Current Events; & Blogs

News Search Services

Newswires & Other Major News Sources

Wires
- Agence France-Presse (AFP)
- Associated Press (AP): Wire Search, RSS Feeds
- Reuters: RSS Feed
- United Press International (UPI): News (no free search)
- News Library: News Wires Search
Papers and Television
- ABC News
- BBC or BBC News
- CNN
- MSNBC
- New York Times
- USA Today

Blogs, Blog Search, and RSS Feeds

A9 Top Blogs Search (and more)
BlogDigger
Daypop
Feedster
FaganFinder
Globe Of Blogs
Technorati and Technorati: Tags
Ari Paparo Dot Com: Big List of Blog Search Engines and the International Big List of Blog Search Engines

Extra, Extra

Opinions

Grants

Strategies

[your topic] grant site:.gov
[your topic] grant site:.org
Example: neuroglial (grant OR grants) (site:.gov OR site:.org) -pubmed
[your topic or region] (grantmakers OR "donors forum")

Government

Other

Grantsmanship

The Art of Grantsmanship / by Jacob Kraicer PDF
Michigan State University Libraries: Grants and Related Resources Home Page: Grantsmanship Techniques: Academic Fundraising Web Resources
University of Washington: HealthLinks: Research Funding Service: Fundamentals of Grantsmanship

Health

Trusted sites

Health Topic Search Strategies

[your term] Healthy 2010
[your term] site:.gov
[your term] (site:.gov OR site:.org)
MLA Guide : Quick Guides to Searching for Health Information

Corporate, Financial, Stocks & Jobs

Statistics, Demographics & Data

Local Information

A9: Yellow Pages
Google Local
Yahoo Local
MedlinePlus: Go Local
Examples:
- PRETRIEVE (Public Record search)
- ScoreCard
- Michigan Public Sex Offender Registry (PSOR) Inquiry
- GreatSchools: Canton

Past Tense

The Web of Yore ...

The Blog of Yore...

Daypop Archives

Refinding

CAVEAT: Please note that these web pages are intended to be used only as part of the instructional process, or as a resource for persons who have already taken the class.

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"Oh, I do understand what they say," she hastily assured him; "but it doesn't mean anything to me. Words, words, words -- and I want to know what to do, what to do with myself, what to do with you, what to do with Dick." -- Jack London. Little Lady of the Big House (1916). URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/ltlbh10.txt

(c)1995-2005, P. F. Anderson, pfa@umich.edu, all text, images, code, etcetera. Please request permission. Last Update: Wednesday, 11-Jan-2006 22:23:55 EST
URL of current page: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/pro/searchtips/tasks.html