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.Google, for example, provides a subject directory for Web sites, organized intocategories, which you can search.Or you can begin to narrow down your topicby considering just what it is that you want to find and then expressing itbriefly, in a word or phrase.Using the menu on the screen, you type the key-words in the designated slot.In an advanced or guided search, using twoor more keywords, sometimes along with words like and and not, will fur-ther break down and limit your topic.(Every database and search engine has itsown techniques for formulating keywords; for an efficient search, it s worth tak-ing the time to check the Help page or the About. page attached to thedatabase that you re using.) This do-it-yourself process, usually called Booleansearching, will be explained and illustrated in the remainder of this chapter.What Is Boolean Searching?Boolean searching, named after George Boole, a nineteenth-centurymathematician, is a method of focusing your topic to get the best possi-ble results from your computer search.If you are too broad in yourwording, you ll get an exceedingly long list of sources, which will beunmanageable; if you re too specific in your wording, you ll get a veryshort list, which can bring your research to a dead halt.To carry out a Boolean (or advanced) search, you refine your topicby combining words, using phrases to express complex subjects, and in-serting operators AND, OR, NOT between keywords.(Some-times, the operators are symbols, such as +, rather than words.) Ineffect, you must ask yourself what you do and what you don t want toknow about your topic.Let s apply these guidelines to a databasesearch for information about Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence of Arabia in quotation marks is your subject ex-pressed as a phrase: the search will include only those sources in whichthe entire phrase is found and omit all those in which both Lawrence and Arabia appear only separately. Lawrence of Arabia AND guerrilla warfare limits the search tothose sources that contain both phrases.A book that mentions Lawrencebut not guerrilla warfare won t appear in the results list, and vice versa. Lawrence of Arabia OR T.E.Lawrence expands the search by ex-pressing the topic two ways and potentially multiplying the number ofsources found. Lawrence of Arabia NOT motion picture limits the search by ex-cluding sources that focus on the film rather than the man. LOCATING SOURCES 301Searching for Lawrence of ArabiaLet s assume that you ve decided to write about Lawrence of Arabia.T.E.Lawrence was a key figure in the Middle East campaigns of World War I, aBritish scholar fascinated by the desert, whose guerrilla tactics against theTurks succeeded partly because he chose to live like and with the Bedouintribes that fought with him.You ve enjoyed the 1962 award-winning movieabout Lawrence, but you d like to find out whether it accurately represents hisexperience.Here are some issues and questions about Lawrence s life thatmight intrigue you: % Acclaimed as a hero after the war, Lawrence chose to enlist in the RoyalAir Force at its lowest rank, under an assumed name.Why? % He died at the age of 46 in a mysterious motorcycle crash.Was this anaccident? % He contributed to the development of a new kind of military tactic.Whywas his kind of guerrilla warfare so effective? Is it still in use today? % He hoped to gain political independence for the Bedouin tribes.Whatprevented him?Starting with an Encyclopedia: One place to begin your search aboutLawrence of Arabia is an encyclopedia, which will provide you with a brief over-view of his life and so help you to narrow down your topic.There are severalgeneral encyclopedias listed in the Google directory (under reference ), someof which are free to use.Exercise caution if you use Wikipedia, the free onlineencyclopedia that anyone can edit, since the articles are written and editedby readers and the information is not always authoritative.The best choice Encyclopedia Britannica Online (EBO) is pay-to-view only.So, access it throughyour library s online link.If you consult EBO, you ll be prompted to type in a question or keyword.So, you type Lawrence of Arabia. Why use quotation marks? They identifyyour keyword as a single phrase, so your results will be restricted to informationabout the Lawrence you re looking for.Without quotation marks, Lawrence ofArabia will be interpreted as a request for information about anyone or anythingnamed Lawrence and any material about Arabia.In its response, EBO offers you a choice: an article about T.E.Lawrence oran article about Lawrence of Arabia (motion picture).At this stage, you ll proba-bly want to click on and read both; you may want to compare the movie versionwith Lawrence s actual experiences.In fact, clicking on the entry for T.E.Lawrence provides you with links to other articles, such as Guerrilla Leader, Advisor on Arab Affairs, and Postwar Activities, as well as icons for Addi-tional Reading and Related Articles. Choosing and reading any of these arti-cles can help you decide what aspect of Lawrence s life you want to write about.Carrying out research is all about choices: % You type a request into a database, and you receive a list of topics orsources to choose from. 302 7 / FINDING SOURCES % You read an article about your subject, and at the end you find a list ofadditional articles headed Bibliography or Further Reading. % You look at a Web site, and throughout the text you see hyperlinks thatwill lead you to related Web pages.Finding sources is not difficult; the real challenge is deciding which ones toread first.Using Computer Searches to Locate BooksDatabases that contain books are usually place-specific.In other words,each library produces a computerized database that lists all the books housedin its building or group of buildings.The library in the next town will have adifferent database for its holdings.Your own college library almost certainlyhas such a database listing all the books on its shelves, organized and search-able by author, by title, and by subject.You can also search comparable data-bases for other libraries in the area or major libraries across the globe.If youwant to examine a full range of the books in existence on Lawrence of Arabia,you can look up that topic in the database of the Library of Congress or theNew York Public Library, both of which are available online.If you locate abook that seems important for your research and your own library does nothave it, your librarian can probably arrange for an interlibrary loan from a li-brary that does.Searching a DatabaseLet s search the Library of Congress Online Catalog (LCOC) for booksabout Lawrence of Arabia
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