1. Searching Exercises
These activities are teacher or librarian-led. Students will
perform the searches individually and instructor will guide
them through discussion of results.
Boolean Searching- Pick a database and perform these search strings:
1. music How many results: ___________
2. music NOT classical How many results: ___________
How are these results different?
3. music AND brain How many results: ___________
What types of results do we have with this string?
4. music OR brain How many results: ___________
How is this different than the music AND brain string?
Other Operators- Pick a database and experiment with these operators:
1. truncation: nurse How many results?____________
nurs* How many results? ____________
What does the * appear to do based on the results? __________
2. wild cards: woman How many results? ___________
women How many results? ___________
wom*n How many results? ___________
What does the ? do? __________
3. nesting: women and nursing How would you eliminate the breastfeeding results?
women and (nursing not breastfeeding)
4. exact phrase: global warming and controversy
“global warming controversy” How are these search results different?
Google-
1. immigration 1800..1900 What does this appear to pull?
2. Immigration site:gov What does this do to the search results?
3. Jaguar –cars –football What does this do to the search results?