The Importance of What Your Librarian Taught You

I remember Mrs. Jira, my freshmen English teacher/librarian.  You do remember librarians, right?  Those unicorn-like creatures that are being eliminated from school systems because ALL they do is check out books....

Okay.  So I'm bitter.  I am a former librarian....turned technology teacher....turned consultant.  I love my job, but I have to poke with my stick every now and then.  BACK to topic.

Your librarian taught you some great stuff, and you might not have even noticed.  Librarians have been finding things no one else can find for years.  So here we are in the Twenty-first Century (living in a world with more information before), and we don't teach people how to FIND things on the Internet.  Logical.

Here's a few things EVERYONE should know about finding things on the Internet.  Most people "google" information.  They type a few things into the Google search engine and peek at the results.  Most people only access information they find on the FIRST page of mined results.  We are, after all, a busy people who yell "FASTER!" as we stand next to our microwave ovens.  Do we find what we need?  Sometimes.  Mostly, we find what others WANT us to find.

So how do we REALLY glean data using what our librarian taught us?  Let's take a mini-lesson, shall we?

Google works on a "natural language" algorithm that selects "key words" from the search string we type.  In simple terms, that means that whatever you type in the "search box" for the Google search engine is broken into words to be "searched."  For example, if I typed the following into Google:

What is the most popular blog?

The algorithm might pull "popular" and "blog" as key words and bring me results.  This type of search can be useful, but when doing specific reference searching, it will gather generic results or thousands of references that require eons of time to evaluate.  What if you have to find something more specific?  What if you need to know all of the articles on Apple technology development from the New York Times from 2009-2011?  Research is like that....specific....and sometimes unforgiving!

How would you create an entry to FIND something like that? Your librarian called this boolean search tools:  AND, OR, NOT, and " ".

site:NYtimes.com  Apple OR "Apple Technology" OR "Apple development" 2009...2011

Using this search string, you will get specific results for what you want like the following results:



Isn't that a better fix?  What does it all mean?

Here are some search terms you should always know.
OR = One or another
AND = In addition to
" " = Finds specific content
site: = looks within a specific site/domain
inurl:  = finds keywords within the URL
intitle:  = finds keywords within the title of a site
... = an elipse will find material within a time frame

Feeling "nerdy"?  You should!  Happy searching!  Oh, and THANK you librarian for those boolean search terms!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How Hard Could It Be Anyway? (And Other Observations About Teaching)

Why Being a Good Teacher Just Isn't Good Enough--A Conversation Concerning Tenure Laws

My Five Big "Ah-Ha" Revelations After 30 Years in Teaching