PROVO — Kimball Benson assists students in their Internet searches on a regular basis.
During Campus Education Week at Brigham Young University, the writing manager at the Harold B. Lee Library gave attendees some of those same tips, although on a more everyday level, in his class, "Google It."
A pretest using electronic voting devices revealed that most of the more than 250 people attending his Monday class were already Internet savvy.
Yet the most common mistake among Internet researchers was that they don't know how to be effective, he said. So he gave these tips when using the popular search engine Google:
Identify key words and key characteristics of the subject. Create a list using synonyms of just three words from a basic question.
Use "or" instead of "and" to avoid limiting results.
Use a minus symbol to avoid getting certain words of expressions.
Other symbols to use in a search include the "+" sign to include a word, quotations around a word or phrase to search for just that word or string of words, a tilde to search for synonyms of a word and a "*" to tell the search engine to fill in the blanks during a search.
Benson also detailed how to use advanced searches on Google to narrow search results and how to find a directory of sites on the search engine. He suggested this Web site to get more detail on using Google: www.google.com/intl/en/help/cheatsheet.html.
Benson used LDS Church scriptural references to support Internet use. He said people were born to gain knowledge to become more like God and that means secular and well as religious knowledge.
E-mail: rodger@desnews.com