Monday, February 14, 2011

Online Search Tutorial

        This week in Innovative Activities, we all met in one of the computer labs for a tutorial on how to do a search in our library’s online data base. One of the librarians came to talk to us and gave us helpful tips to find the best results. She went over the different areas on the website such as her personal contact page, the search page, and an option that allows you to send yourself the links to pages you found in an email. She also showed us how to enter information into the search engine so we can find more, specific options of what we are looking for. Putting quotations around items that are two words such as “therapeutic recreation” keeps the two words together in the search. She also said we can put synonyms for the words we are looking for to widen the search such as kids OR children OR youth. Another tip she gave use to expand our search was putting an asterisk after certain words such as teen*. That then finds all forms of the words such as teenagers or teens.
        After her helpful tutorial, we all began our own searches to find resources for our four page paper on an activity for a specific population in therapeutic recreation.  Her tutorial was very helpful when it came to doing our own search for our paper. I could get the results I was looking for in a quicker amount of time. In the past, searching for sources can be frustrating and get me nowhere. Now I can use what I have learned to hopefully make my searching process easier.

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