Search Engine Features Reference
Search

Engine

  Address

  All begin

with WWW

Include/Exclude

    Shortcuts

Include Exclude

Boolean Operators Supported

AND      OR         NOT      phrase   group

Selected Features
AltaVista altavista.com      +          -    x                 x                    x              "....."             * wildcard, multiple

languages, date range

DejaNews dejanews.com      &         &!    x                 x            AND NOT      "....."        (...) only searches Usenet,

? wildcard

Excite   excite.com        +         -     x                 x            AND NOT      "....."        (...) Index, "more like this"
HotBot hotbot.com        +         -          x                 x                     x               "....."        (...) menu shorcuts, index
Google google.com        +         -    x                 x                     x               "....."        (...) menu shorcuts, largest data base that includes material back to the 1980's
Infoseek infoseek.com        +         -                                                "....." case sensitive, index
Lycos lycos.com        +         -       x                x                     x                "....." ADJ, NEAR, FAR,

BEFORE, index

Magellan mckinley.com      +         -      x                x            AND NOT        "....."       (...) Index,"Green light sites

only"

Search search.com      +         -                                                                 "....." case sesitive, index
Webcrawler webcrawler.com        +         -     x                x                     x                 "....."
Yahoo yahoo.com        +         -                                                 "....." * wildcard, date range,

index

I especially like google.com. They have recently added many new resources dating back well before the Web was conceived. They also have an excellent means for continually narrowing your search. After you received your first set of hits from key words you have used (typically you will get thousands if not hundreds of thousands of hits the first time), go down the the bottom of the screen and click on the link for search within results. You get a new window that then allows you to narrow your search with new words. You can do this continuously until you find exactly the set of hits that work best for you.

Operator Quick Reference

AND or +

examples

James AND Bond

+James +Bond

cats AND dogs

+cats +dogs

Sonny AND Cher

+Sonny +Cher

New AND England AND fall

+new +England +fall

NOT or -

examples

Kennedy NOT assasination

+Kennedy -assassination

antiques NOT clocks

+antiques -clocks

Clearwater NOT Creedance

+Clearwater -Creedance

peanut NOT butter NOT brittle

+peanut -butter -brittle

OR

examples

email OR e-mail vacumn OR vacuum Houston OR Dallas elm OR poplar OR oak
Phrase

examples

"Green Eggs and Ham" "Happiness is a

warm puppy"

"adult literacy and

technology"

"Declaration of

Independence"

Grouping

examples

(apple OR pecan) AND pie (IBM OR Macintosh)

AND computer

("Bill of Rights" OR

"Magna Carta") AND

online

("Malcolm Knowles" OR

("Howard McClusky") AND

andragogy

Adapted from material developed by the Ohio Literacy Resource Center, 414 White Hall, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242 - 800.765.2897 - olrc@literacy.kent.edu

Using InfoTrac

InfoTrac is a very useful Library-developed tool for searching periodicals and finding articles. Frequently you get only the abstracts, but increasingly you can download the entire text. It is available on the Elmira College campus, as well as many other college campuses.

This should be a very useful tool for future research efforts.

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