The Goal of an Online Search is to get the right information, of the necessary quality in a reasonable amount of time. So how do we do that without just wadding through vast amounts of results. The main thing we want to do is to developed a strategy to make our searches the most efficient.
The Needle and the Haystack.
Some times online and database searches feel like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. So how do you make it more efficient?
VRHS Library subscribes to databases of all kinds, from general reference to subject specific. These database provide access to a wide variety of articles from magazines, newspapers and academic journals, as well as information form academic and professional reference sources, without all the "junk" of the internet.
To access all additional databases see the A-Z on the next tab.
| Phrase search | " " | To search for a group of words in an exact order, | "Martin Luther King, Jt" or "search engine" "the band that sang hold your head up" |
| Site search | site: | To limit searchs to a particular site or domain Pair with -to eliminate hits from a site or domain |
site:gov site:npr.org -site:.com |
| File type | Filetype: | To limit results to certain file types |
Filetype:pdf |
| In Url or In title |
Inurl: Intitle: |
Limit results to those with terms in either the URL or webpage title |
Inurl:equal justice initiative intitle:martin luther king |
* To find a search term within a page, use the "find" feature on the web browser (CRTL+F command)
