| The ELAC Theatrepedia | Internet Search Tools |
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Related Pages: Electronic Text Collections, Theatre-Link.com, Theatre Central. |
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Web Searching Techniques Use several short words or phrases, observe the results, add or refine your search expression until you get it down to a manageable, on-topic list. Unfortunately, with many search engines the most relevant documents to you may not appear in the top 40 results. This is because search engines do not rank relevancy so much as they rank the frequency of keywords, the number of external links to the documents, the number of times other people have clicked on a link in the search engine's site, the document's title and various other things. The end result is that you are usually more successful typing in two very specific keywords joined by "AND" than you are typing in one general keyword or a specific phrase. Note also that search engines employ something called Boolean logic, which is different from Vulcan logic :). Boolean logic mainly refers to "OR" and "AND" and "NOT". If you type in several words separated by "OR" or a comma, the search engine will find all documents that contain any of the words, but not necessarily all the words. If you use "AND" or a +, the search engine will display only documents that contain all the words. Using "NOT" will display documents that do not contain the word that follows "NOT". As with algebra, parentheses can be used to group words. Finally, phrases should be put in quotes (") so the search engine will treat them as one string of words rather than as separate words joined by an implied "OR".
Academic research tools Theatre and Arts Resources
General Web search tools
Usenet search tools:
Books and newspapers
"History is the autobiography of a madman"
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