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National History Day: Breaking Barriers

This resource helps you through the 5 steps of Research for your National History Day Project.

Quick Tips

You can tell Google what to do through what Google calls Operators. You can use them to help narrow or broaden the results in your Search.

OR: You can use two search terms separated and both terms to be found independent of each other. The OR operator must be expressed in all capital letters, and it will expand the number of results.

For example: Pepsi OR Coke

Minus sign (-): You can make your results smaller by using the minus sign to exclude a term. 

For example: cherry soda -coke

Quotes ("  "): Since Google uses AND operators as a default between words, search for exact phrases with quotes.

For example: "The Choice of a New Generation"

Wildcard (*): Use this if you are not sure of a particular word in your phrasing.

For example: The Choice of a * Generation

site: You can search for a specific type of website domain (e.g. .edu, .gov. org) using the site search. 

For example: site:.edu Cherry Coke

filetype: You can search for a specific file type such as a .pdf.

For example: filetype:.pdf Pepsi taste tests

intitle: Use this if you want to tell Google to search for your words only in the title. 

For example: intitle:Pepsi

allintitle: Similar to intitle, this will search for multiple words or phrases only in title.

For example: allintitle:Pepsi New Generation

Let's do some Googling!

  How Do You GOOGLE?

You have a topic. You have a Research Question. You're ready, right? Just plug that question into Google and go! Well, that may work if you are looking for today's weather or how tall Mt. Everest is. 

But for complicated questions, typing it in its entirety can be tricky. Have you done done this and got a 1,000,000,000 results that barely relate to your to topic? 

Yeah, you've been there! I can tell! Let's try it again with some advanced tips and GOOGLE away!

What you want to KNOW:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let's Google!

 

 

Site.edu British suffrage

  • Will only search for British suffrage in sites from universities with a valid .edu license thus narrowing your results to academic related articles. 

intitle:Irish women

  • Will search for the word Irish in the title and women everywhere else including the body of the text.

Put them together

  • It will narrow your results to only university documents or sites that have the words British suffrage as well as women in any part of the document and Irish in title. 

You can now use any of the operators on the left-hand menu to GOOGLE smart!