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Top Ten Database Search Tips Tutorial

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Web Concerns: No Subject Headings

Encountering useless web pages are only one problem in using the Internet for research. There are many other major issues.

One problem is that nearly all search engines lack the sophisticated search capabilities that both library catalogs and databases provide. You can't do a search on a subject heading in Google because it doesn't include subject headings. It just searches the full-text of web pages. Because of this, searches will often return results of thousands and thousands of web pages.

example of Google search

You will get better search results using subscription databases and library catalogs rather than Internet search engines such as Google or Yahoo!.

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May 4th, 2004