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How-To Research Tutorials Home

Use this comprehensive list of tutorials and modules to learn how to be a better researcher

Basic search techniques for Google, Scholar, Books, News & Images

  • Capitalize search operators/boolean connectors AND, OR. 
    • Example: zika AND "birth defects"
  • Exclude words - use a dash before a word with multiple meanings or to exclude a site.
    • Example: jaguar speed -car    pandas -site:wikipedia.org
  • Phrases - All the words in the exact order
    • “your phrase in double quotations”
  • Compound words - when you’re not certain if one word or two 
    • (“health care” OR healthcare)
  • Wildcard - placeholder for any unknown term (word or number)
    • "evidence based" ** practice
  • Number range - results contain numbers in the range
    • 1990..1999 AND ("native american" OR "american indian") AND poverty
  • Terms in the document title
    •   intitle:”human trafficking”

Cited reference searches

Use the Cited by link to to see newer papers that reference the citation.

  • On your Google Scholar results page, click Cited by to see articles that have cited your reference.
  • Entries with [Citation] have been extracted from bibliographies of articles and may not have complete bibliographic information.

Limit page results in Google, Books, News & Images

No spaces between the limit and search terms.

define:hipster limits results to pages with definitions
filetype:pdf AND ebola limits pages with specified file type (pdf, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, dwf, ps, kml, kmz, swf)
site:cdc.gov AND ebola limits results to pages from the domain
info:cdc.gov  results included cached version of page, pages that link to site, similar pages
link:cdc.gov  pages that link to the page
related:cdc.gov pages that are similar

Find specific information types: books, blogs, news, images

Books

  • Go to books.google.com to search full text of books--free, borrow, buy.

Blogs

  • Google search box > yourterms AND blog
  • Google search box > yourterms > News > Search tools > All news > Blogs

News & News Archive

  • Google search box > yourterms > News for current computer generated headlines
  • Google search box > yourterms > News > Search tools > Recent > Custom range for articles from 2003
  • Google search box > yourterms > News > Search tools > Archives for articles prior to 2003
  • Go to news.google.com for top headlines in 11 categories and 70+ regional editions
  • Go to news.google.com > down arrow for Advanced news search for more search options

Images

  • Google search box > Images > Search tools for size, color type, time, usage rights
  • Go to images.google.com > Settings > Advanced search for size, color type, time, usage rights
  • Go to images.google.com > Camera icon > Search by image by url or uploading an image, a good way to check for appropriate use