Going Beyond Google: using
the internet for your PhD
Using the internet for research
Aim: To discuss the range of content found on the
internet, contrasting the strengths and weaknesses
of web-based research, including:
• Comparing advanced features of search engines
such as Google with the basic search function, for
finding relevant scholarly literature on their
research topic.
• Contrasting bibliographic databases, specialist
search engines or gateways and discussing the
appropriate merits of each
• Evaluating material on the internet using standard
criteria.
Session Overview
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Search engines: pros & cons
Basic and Advanced search tips
Bing and other search engines
Google Scholar & Google Books
Introduction to article linking
Further help
Review of last week
• How did you get on?
• Which databases did you use?
• Any problems?
The Internet is….
• The internet has become most people’s main way
of finding information
• However, there are problems….
• There is no central index
• There is no quality standards or peer review
• Information can:
• be moved or removed without warning
• be wrong, out of date and biased
• be overwhelming!
• Exercise in Moodle – authentic websites
Interpreting what you find
online
• World Trade Organisation examples which is real site - how can you tell?
• www.wto.org
• www.worldtradeorganisation.com
• www.gatt.org
Internet Evaluation Criteria
• Who?
• Name & responsibilities
• Contact details
• Individual or organisation?
• Where? Domain-check the URLs for an indication of the
type of organisations who created the site
• .edu .ac .gov all educational or governmental sites
• .com commercial site
• When?
• When was the site last updated
• What?
• Serious or hoax?
• Evidence?
Internet Detective site
Is everything on the web genuine?
• Websites in Moodle
• whois.net
• check who owns the domain
• Very easy to set up plausible sounding
sites
All about Google
• How does Google work?
• What Google won’t find or tell you!
• Google is only 13 years old! Founded
in 1998
• Google accounts - using Gmail,
Calendar etc all affect your search
results
• Getting the most out of Google involves understanding a bit
about how it works – and try the advanced search
• Tips for improving your searching
• Capitals / lower case
• Automatic use of ‘and’
• Automatic word stemming
Google’s Interface
• The interface changes subtly all the time
• Depends on where you are in the world, and which
version you went to (google.com or google.co.uk /
google.de etc)
• Basic homepage with advanced options
available:
• Advanced Search
• More search tools
• Instant update
Results pages
• Indenting of some
results
• Clustering of links
within a site
• Google Books and
Scholar results in the
main Google results
• Cached pages
• Different results if
you’re logged in
• Twitter feed results
• Some results are
seconds old, from
twitter and
Facebook
• News results (like
from the BBC are
often minutes old
• Others can be
weeks old.
Google Scholar
• http://scholar.google.com
• Contains references to:
• peer-reviewed papers and abstracts
• theses
• books
• From:
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academic publishers
professional societies
preprint repositories
universities and other scholarly organisations
• No Approved List of sources
Google Scholar and LSE
• Should indicate using LSE Article finder to
tell you about LSE subscriptions. You can
add this off campus
• If you find something on Google that won’t
let you access, check our Library Catalogue
for the correct link – using Google may
mean that you aren’t recognised as a
member of LSE
Google books
• Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/
• Similar to Amazon’s search inside the book
• Can allow limited to access to books and
may be useful
• Copyright restrictions mean you can only
view small amounts of the book
• No Approved List of sources
iGoogle
• Can create a personal Google home page
with short cuts to useful links and news
feeds
• Set up an iGoogle account-we will use this
again in class 6
• Google maps for finding maps and satellite
images
• Google Desktop search for searching your
own PC
• For the full list see:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
Google Alerts
• Can set email alerts for searches
• Think carefully about your search terms
and how frequently you want to receive
alerts
• Can be overloaded with results – may
get very few if search too specific
• Not all news is ‘new’
Not Just Google…
• Bing: http://www.bing.com/
• Yahoo: http://uk.yahoo.com/
• Wolfram Alpha:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
University of Berkeley comparison guide
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Gui
des/Internet/SearchEngines.html
Meta search engines (search across
search engines)
• http://www.metacrawler.com/
• http://www.zuula.com/
Bing
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Microsoft – evolved from Live search, MSN
Yahoo shares Bing’s engine
Social searches
Related searches
Visual search
Delicious
• Collection of useful free resources chosen
by LSE Library:
http://delicious.com/lselibrary
• Use subject tags to refine your search
• Important to note full web page details for
your bibliography
• Consider using Delicious to file and arrange
your own internet resources
• Social bookmarking classes - CLT
Conclusions
• So much now available on the Internet -the
problem is finding quality resources!
• Learn to refine your web searching
• Learn to get the most out of search engines
but know what it’s not good for!
• Start thinking about appropriate citation of
web resources
Next Week….
Continuing to go beyond Google to find:
• Research publications
• Theses
• Conference Proceedings
• Working papers
Managing these resources
Image collections on the
internet
• Images are easy to find and download from the
Internet (Google image search)
• Images are subject to copyright and you must
exercise caution when using images for anything
other than private research and study
• Safest way is to use the Creative commons
image search
• Most websites will have a copyright statement or
terms and conditions – check this before using it
Education Image Gallery (EIG)
• The LSE hold a licence for the EIG
• Available at: http://edina.ac.uk/eig/
• 55,000 images copyright cleared for
teaching and research – can use these
in your thesis
• Don’t forget to credit your images
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 2.5 License.