Download The World Wide Web - Acadia University

Doing research without leaving
your classroom sounds great…
How to make the web meet your
expectation.
Adapted from a workshop
by Pat McDougall
The World Wide Web
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more than 1 billion publicly available documents.
no one engine searches everything on the Web
search their own database
E.g.
• www.altavista.com
• www.thebighub.com…metasearch
• www.infoseek.com
Web-Words
• web site
• URL: Uniform Resource Locator
• HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
• Internet: an electronic communications network that
connects computer networks and organizational computer
facilities around the world (Merriam-Websters on the web)
Searching
• Be Specific in your keywords!
• If you want information on the
1998 Volkswagen Beetle
• Don't ask for cars
• Don’t ask for Volkswagens
• Ask for 1998 Volkswagen
Beetles
Plus + and - Minus
• Using the + sign to add words
• translates as “must have”
• use the minus symbol to exclude words
• schools+Nova Scotia-elementary
• what if you want to search for information
about Prince Edward Island?
• prince+edward+island
Phrase Searching
• You could get a site that talks about
Prince Edward vacationing on an island
anywhere
• Phrase search: terms appear in exactly
the order you specify
• “Prince Edward Island”
• capitals vs. small case
• use the * to target multiple forms of the
same word
• sun* = sun, sunlight, sunshine, sunny, etc
Advanced Searching
• Boolean
• AND, NOT, NEAR
• group terms within parentheses
• (database OR software) NEAR (engineer AND experience)
• target specific fields
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•
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anchor:
domain:
image:
title:
url:
• camping NOT tents AND domain:ca
Scavenger hunt
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Find the surface temperature of
the sun.
Who is Bernie Dodge?
Is it too late for the HeadSmashed-In-Pow Wow this year?
How long do you boil a haggis?
What colour is a Polar Bear’s
skin?
How many different kinds of
microbes live on or in the human
body?