Searching the Internet...the right way

Everyone is aware of the brilliant and multiple ways that the Internet can help you when you happen to find yourself searching for something. I have used the Internet to search for several things, ranging from academic research to shopping for clothes. The point is that there are numerous ways in which one can search for things. I, along with 60% of the United States, choose to use the search engine, Google. It has been something that I have used for a really long time now, and it has worked extremely well, almost always getting me to the information that I am looking for.

It wasn't until recently that I discovered how to use this magical search engine to perform more to my advantage. In my computer class the other day, we had a wonderful presentation by Trinity's very own Mr. Chris Nolan, an assistant librarian (more like an Internet wizard if you ask me), who was so very kind to show us how to search the Internet properly. Everyone has already probably experienced a search of some kind on one of the search engines (Yahoo, AOL, Ask,etc) and, if lucky, has received over a million results that are related to the topic. The truth is that most of those results have very little, if anything at all, to do with what you are really looking for. Mr. Nolan gave the class some tips on how to really narrow your search down in order to best find what it is that you are looking for. By adding in a + or "" in your topic search, you are more likely to get results that match your keywords if you happen to be searching for two different things and how they are related to each other. I found this to be very interesting to me, because I always use the word "and" , and never really get the things that I am looking for. This will probably be the most helpful when the time comes for some research for a class assignment.

You could also use the link Advanced Search to pull up only links that pertain to the keywords that you typed in on the search bar. The Google Scholar link is an excellent way to find scholarly sources that are more likely to be more reliable than other random things posted on the Internet. The URL extensions are another thing to look for when trying to find a reliable source. For example when doing research on the government, it would probably better to go with a site ending in .gov rather than a site ending with .com.

All of these tips are extremely helpful and are only going to make life a little easier for me as a student. I am really glad that Mr. Nolan was kind enough to help out his fellow Trinity students like this. A really big thanks to you...