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Select your search engine. I recommend Alta
Vista: http://uk.altavista.com/ ; or
Google: http://www.google.com/
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If you use Alta Vista make sure the search is
set for worldwide and not UK See title bar on screen.
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Type in search keywords. There are three ways
to do this:
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Type in animal
communication. This will find all pages containing either the word animal
or the word communication.
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Type in “animal
communication” (including the quotes). This will find all pages
that contain the exact phrase animal communication.
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Type in animal
+ communication (including the plus sign and spaces). This will find
all pages that contain both the words animal and communication.
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Search strings can be combined. So “animal communication” + hauser + pdf
will find all pages containing the string animal
communication and the separate words hauser
and pdf. (pdf is useful because it identifies
Adobe Acrobat downloadable files, and many professional papers are in that
format.).
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If you get too many hits then add more keywords
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Prepare for disappointment. There is an awful
lot on the internet, but not much from before 1995, although more is being piled
on every day.
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The more you know about what you are searching
for the better. However, the more complex the search string the fewer “hits”
you will get. This is fine if you are looking for a specific paper and find it,
but you will miss many almost as interesting papers. Better to start the search
with few keywords and add others if the hit rate is too high.
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Searches do not include punctuation. So a
search for “he
likes me” will find Those are the thinks he
likes. Me, I prefer… Letter cases (capitals and lower) are also
ignored.
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Sometimes a search will identify the end of a
keyword as the end of a word, sometimes it won’t. So a search for “I like me” could find ferengi
like meat. This can be overcome by putting a space before and after the
string: “ I
like me ”.
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When searching for names, remember that there
are various conventions available: Martin Edwardes,
M. Edwardes, Edwardes, M, Edwardes et al… It is best to search for edwardes
and try to cut down the search in some other way, e.g. edwardes + linguistics.
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Set a time limit for the surfing (half an hour
is usually enough) otherwise you will find you are traipsing round the Internet
all day. If you find something useful then save it to disk and move on.
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When you find an interesting page (not an
acrobat document) and want to save it:
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Click on Edit
then on Select all. Click on Edit
again then Copy.
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Open Word or open a new document if Word is
already open.
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Click on Edit
then on Paste.
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Put the page address onto the top of the
document or (even better) as a header on each page.
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Save and close the document.
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When you find an interesting Acrobat document
and want to save it:
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Click on the Save
symbol (the little disk picture) on the acrobat tool bar. Locate an appropriate
folder; give the file a SHORT name (a long name is rejected with a disk full
message); press Save.
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Go to the folder using Explorer or some other
filing method and change the filename to something useful.
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Search for fitch.
This gives 218,966 results: too many.
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Search for fitch
+ larynx. This gives 178 results: better, but still a lot to trawl
through.
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Search for fitch
+ larynx + evolution. This gives 49 results: close enough.
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Look down list. Check a couple of hopeful sites
but no joy (use the Back button to
return to the search screen).
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Find a pdf in the list labelled FitchWray.
Check it out: Bingo!