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Google Tips
- Use "quotation marks" to define phrases
- Use "quotation marks" to enclose the titles of known items you know or suspect to be available on the free internet
- Use Google Advanced Search, especially for searching within particular domains such as .gov and .edu
- To look up an expert, type the person's name (again, in quotation marks); if necessary, add the name of the university where they work, the title of an article they've written, or something else that will give you more information on that person
- When looking for factual information outside of Wikipedia, always find an "About" page to get an idea of who is providing the information, what they say their purpose and audience is, how their efforts are funded and if there is reason to think they have a strong bias favoring or opposing certain kinds of information
- Use Google Scholar as one way to find scholarly articles - but remember to set it up for FindIt@MU to hook you up with full text access if you are accessing Google Scholar from off campus
- Use define: to locate definitions of words. Sample Google search: define:white paper
- Realize that Google may mold your search results to you if you're always on the same physical computer or logged in as the same user on lab computers. You can remedy this by clearing your browser cache or using a private or incognito window.
