Notes for Research

8th graders, you can find the notes on our class research below:

Please don't just do a simple Google search!  The best information isn't free, which is why NEST pays for great, reliable resources.

Step 1: Go to http://library.nycenet.edu

Step 2: Scroll down the page and look on the right hand side for New Explorations, then click on the link.

Step 3: On the library home page, look at...

• Databases (a collection of reliable published articles, journals etc. in electronic format).  These are good places to start:
• Grolier Online Databases
• EBSCO Databases
• History Study Center (Proquest)

• Subject Directories (a list of the best, most reliable websites sorted by subject):
• Multnomah County Library Homework Site

Keyword and Boolean Search Notes

• Keyword: a significant word or phrase that could be used to describe the contents of a document
• Search term: a word that a researcher submits to a search engine or database to find matches within a site or document.
• Boolean connectors: words like “and,” “or,” “not,” that help you to refine your search and find more relevant material.
• Example #1 “AND”: To search for word and terms together
• Say you want to find articles on violence on television so you use the following search terms: television violence
• With this, you will get back results for any pages/articles that have either “television” or “violence” on it.
• However, if you want to have only results that have both television AND violence, you would add a Boolean connector.  Your search would look like this:
• television AND violence
• With this, you will only get pages/articles with both “television” and “violence” in the content.

• Example #2 “OR”: To include possible synonyms or related terms for a broader search
• Say you want to find articles about teens texting so you use the following search terms:  teen texting
• With this, you will get back results for any page/article that has either “teen” or “texting” on it.
• However, if you want results with BOTH teen and texting and you don’t want to miss out on pages/articles that use the synonym “adolescent” instead of “teen” you would add Boolean connectors.  Your search would look like this:
• texting AND (teen OR adolescent)
• Example #3 Quotation marks: To look for exact phrases
• This is my favorite!  Think back to our theme of human nature.  If you were to look up human AND nature, you would find pages that have those two words on them, but in entirely different places.  For example, it could be a page about human's impact on the natural world rather than the concept of human nature itself.
• To look for exact phrases, put them in quotation marks, so your search would look like this:
• "human nature"
• This will find these exact words together.
• (Also a great way to find song lyrics if you just put one line you remember from it in quotes, you'll probably find it!)

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