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Ohio State Newark: Research & More: Finding & Evaluating Information Online

Tutorial

Choosing and Using Resources

Developed by librarians at Ohio State, this resource allows you to improve your research skills through interactive online tutorials.  This innovative e-book can be read on the web or downloaded for later viewing.  

Google Scholar Search

If you would like to seek out scholarly articles online, Google Scholar should be on your list of reference sites. It weeds out general web content to focus strictly on scholarly journals to give you sources worth citing.

Google Scholar Search

Using Google Scholar

When doing a Google Search, it is important to familiarize yourself with the engine’s operator strings. Try these tips: use quotes to find an exact phrase, use “site:” to search only a specific site, or “–” to exclude a term from your results. You can also use the Advanced Search interface to add criteria like reading level, language, file type, and date, and turn SafeSearch (the content-filtering option) on or off.

This short video provides a guide unique search features of Google Scholar

Tutorial courtesy of Cooperative Library Instruction Project.

E-books available free online

  • National Academic Press: The National Academic Press now offers its entire PDF catalog of books collection for free.
Google Book Search

Evaluating Web Resources

About Online Search Engines

Search Engines:

The best search engine in the world is the one that you actually know how to use.  Most of them have an advanced search capacity which most people never bother to examine.  If you do, you will discover whether the engine accepts  search strings in which terms are connected with AND, OR, AND NOT, or whether it recognizes search symbols like + and -.  If you really like Google, for instance, find and print out the pages that explain how to do sophisticated searches and keep them for a quick reference.  

Click the links below to find out the best way to do effective searching.      

Booleans

Booleans

AND - Commands a search engine to bring back both terms

OR - Commands a search engine to bring back either of the terms

NOT - Commands  a search engine to ignore all results with a certain word.

Quick tip: in Google, use a minus sign (-) instead of NOT

Quotation marks

Bring back exact search results.  "Ohio State University" means only OSU, no Ohio University too.

What to learn more? Review these sections of Choosing and Using Sources

Main Concepts

Precision Searching

Search Statements

Contact Us:

The Ohio State University at Newark

John L & Christine Warner Library
Ohio State University
Newark Campus

library-newark.osu.edu

 
For library help:
740-366-9307

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