>Who is the author/creator? What is their expertise? Is it education or experience? Did they live through an event? What makes them an authority?
>Is there anything about this source that makes you doubt its credibility? Are there sources cited? What are these sources and does the author correctly interpret these sources?
>When and why was this source written? Is it trying to sell something or inform you? Is is too old to be relevant? Do you need something older?
>Does this information help you with your research need? Does it add value? What does it lack?
>How do you plan on using this source? Is it background info? Is it something you are arguing against?
Begin your search here: WorldCat Discovery-a mega search tool!
Find books, articles, media, and more at Butler and beyond
Hunting the Dark Knight by Article Databases:
Go to the Databases by Subject list for other subject databases.
Butler Libraries subscribe to three documentary/educational film collections, Films on Demand, VAST, and Kanopy. Check out the links to these databases below for interviews and biofilms on your person of significance.
CCOM: Strategic Communication, Journalism, Sports Media, Esports, Exploratory Communication; LAS: English, Exploratory Studies.
Temporary contact for: Philosophy & Religion, Political Science
Schedule an appt. with me for research support in these disciplines.
109B Irwin Library
317-940-9949
sneal@butler.edu
Think about it: search engines crawl thousands, maybe even millions and billions, of pages or records trying to match your search term with results. You're going to be absolutely overwhelmed with results if you only enter a single search term. You're also going to find a lot of completely irrelevant stuff.
So how can you improve your chances?
Come up with multiple search terms and combine them using the options described here.
Combining search terms with AND will:
Search for politics = 296 million results
Search for "college student" AND politics = 43 million results more focused on your topic
Search for "college student" AND politics AND "2008 election" = 543,000 more relevant results
Combining search terms with OR will:
Search for movie = 199,781 results
Search for film OR movie = 642,906 results that mention either film or movie, or both
Search for "middle school" = 21,401 results that mention "middle school"
Search for "junior high" = 7,261 results
Search for "middle school" OR "junior high" = 28,177 results that mention either "middle school" or "junior high", or both
Search for "Hunger Games" NOT movie = 487 results
Search for cloning = 42,736 results
Search for cloning NOT human = 30,325 results
Search engines attempt to match your terms to the items it searches (titles, authors, abstracts, description fields, full text, etc).
However, search engines do NOT understand phrases, sentences, or questions. So when it does this matching, it searches for each term indivdiually. Some searches attempt to find terms in proximity to each other, but this varies depending on where you search.
If your search terms are more than single worlds, employ quotation marks to show the search engine that you want the terms to be found together. The search will look for exactly what you place in the quotation marks, so be sure there are no mistakes.
Search for Adam Smith = 38,700,000 results
Search for "Adam Smith" = 2,730,000 results
Search for theory of relativity = 3,430,000 results
Search for "theory of relativity" = 856,000 results
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