Google can be a useful tool for finding information online. However, it can be difficult to find the most relevant and reliable sources of information from a list of thousands or millions of results. Don't assume the results at the top are the best ones! The following strategies will help you search Google more effectively.
Use your keywords and the command site:url to find results from one website or from a group of websites. For instance, a search for foundation phase site:gov.wales will find information about the Foundation Phase from the Welsh Government website. You could use site:ac.uk to search academic websites.
Use the command filetype: to limit your search to a particular type of document. This can be useful if you are looking for a certain type of information. For example, if you government documents are likely to be published in PDF form, so you could use filetype:pdf to limit your results to PDFs and make it easier to find what you need. Numerical data is likely to appear in a spreadsheet, so you could use filetype:xls to look for Excel documents.
Google Scholar searches scholarly literature such as journal articles and abstracts, but you may have difficulty accessing the full-text of the material you find. Linking your Google Scholar account to Swansea University will help with this. Just go to the settings cog from the menu
and then go to Library Links to find Swansea University.
Although Google Scholar can be useful, iFind and subject databases such as Science Direct have certain key advantages:-
This link opens in a new windowAccess to hundreds of newspapers and other news sources from many countries around the world, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the USA. Nexis contains the text of many newspaper articles from the early 1990s onwards. Some newspapers are available full text from the 1970s and 1980s.
The Financial Times, one of the world’s leading business news organisations, is recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. It provides essential news, comment, data and analysis for the global business community.
The Economist is a weekly magazine covering business, finance, economics, science, technology and the arts. Articles from The Economist can be found in the ProQuest Business Collection.
The ProQuest Business Collection provides access to six key business databases: ABI Inform Complete, Accounting and Tax, Banking Information Source, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), ProQuest Asian Business and Reference, and ProQuest Entrepreneurship.
As well as containing articles from the Economist ProQuest Business Collection provides access to other news items. Search using your keywords then refine by 'Source Type' on the right hand side of the results page.
The UKPressOnline site provides access to the full text of the Daily Express from 1900 to the present. It also includes the Sunday Express, Daily Star and Star Sunday. Full page facsimiles are provided so each issue can be viewed as it would have originally appeared (complete with photos, pictures, adverts etc.).
Welsh Newspapers Online provides free access to about 120 Welsh newspaper publications up to 1919. It includes most of The Cambrian from 1804 to 1910.
US Newsstream enables users to search the most recent premium U.S. news content, as well as archives which stretch back into the 1950s featuring newspapers, newswires, blogs, and news sites in active full-text format. For academic and public libraries, US Newsstream offers exclusive access to the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and co-exclusive access (with Factiva) to The Wall Street Journal. US Newsstream also offers one of the largest collections of local and regional newspapers, and is cross-searchable on the ProQuest platform.
Cross searches the 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection, 19th Century UK Periodicals, British Library Newspapers, Picture Post and Times Digital Archive.