Web Search Savvy: Strategies and Shortcuts for Online Research provides readers of all skill levels with efficient search strategies for locating, retrieving, and evaluating information on the Internet. Utilizing her experience as a reporter working on deadline, author Barbara G. Friedman offers the most effective methods for finding useful and trustworthy data online, and presents these techniques in a straightforward, user-friendly manner.
Anyone who uses the Internet for research will find much of value here, including techniques that harness the power of advanced searches to optimize search results, avoid advertising clutter, and locate low- or no-cost databases. Screen captures and diagrams illustrate the steps, rationale, and results to accompany various search strategies. This book emphasizes techniques that make the Web work for individuals rather than for advertisers, such as choosing the most appropriate search engine for the job and tweaking its advanced options to narrow a search and optimize results; identifying cost-free sources of online data; using creative approaches to locate information; evaluating the integrity of online data; and protecting the privacy of the researchers and the researched.
Web Search Savvy is an essential resource for students, scholars, and practitioners in journalism and mass communications, and it offers practical and useful guidance for anyone researching information online.
The book is organized in a logical way to help you find information online but is not limited to search strategies. It's intended to maximize your proficiency to minimize your time online. Let me add that I'm not a computer expert. Rather, I'm trained as a journalist and I've written in straightforward language. If I use jargon occasionally it's because the Internet has created its own vocabulary, so I've also taken care to provide a glossary of terms at the end of the book. Certainly you'll get the most out of the book if you read it cover to cover. But, realizing that my goal here is to save time, the chapters have been organized for quick reference.