High Library
Elizabethtown College
http://www2.etown.edu/library/Scholarlywebsites.htm

How to Find Scholarly Material on the Internet

Know where you’re going.

 

A. If possible, begin with a specific web address, rather than doing a keyword search in a

    engine search.

 

B. There are several ways to do this.

o         Read web reviews in such publications as Choice Current Web Reviews for Academic Libraries (Ref 025.04 C545.) These reviews are organized by topic.

o         Make note of sites recommended by your professors or mentioned in other scholarly reading you do.

 

Plan your search strategy.

 

            A. Do a carefully crafted search, rather than a quick keyword search.

 

            B. Each search engine has its own means of refining your search. Study the search engine’s help screen and advanced search pages.

 

            C. Try one or more of these techniques for refining a search.

o         Use a variety of synonyms or related terms for your search term

§         Examples: plants, herbs, botanical

o         Combine terms using Boolean searching. This means narrowing or broadening your search by combining terms with “AND”, “NOT” or “OR.” Here are some examples:

§         “Plants AND medicine” will retrieve only those web sites that contain both terms.

§         “Plants NOT nuclear” will retrieve web sites with the word “plants’ as long as they do not also include the word “nuclear.”

§         “Plants OR botanical” will retrieve all sites with the word “plants” as well as all sites with the word “botanical.”

o         Use truncation. This means using a root word and the truncation symbol to retrieve web sites with all forms of the word.

§         For example botan* will retrieve botany, botanical, botanicals, botanist, etc.

o         Do a phrase search to make sure the search engine looks for an entire phrase rather than isolated words. This often requires putting the phrase in quotation marks.

§         Searching for “medical botany” will find those two words adjacent to each other, rather than in separate sentences.

o         Limit your search by language, domain, date and other limiters. You generally have to go to your search engine’s advanced search page to do this.

§         A language limit will allow you to retrieve just English sites.

§         A domain limit allows you to choose just .edu or just .gov, etc. These sites frequently have more scholarly content than .com and .net sites.

§         A date limit allows you to find recently revised sites.

§         There are other limiters such as file format (pdf vs. Microsoft Word), and location of search term (in the title, in the full text, etc.).

 

Evaluate what you get.

 

            A. Look at the authority, objectivity, reasonableness, accuracy and depth of the site.

 

            B. Check these evaluation tips. 

 

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