Technology Funding: Internet Resources Conducting Your Own Research One of the wonderful aspects of the World Wide Web is the plethora of search engines and databases. The most distressing aspect of these finding tools is their lack of standardization: of format, indexing methods and search strategies. Fortunately almost all search engines provide a link to a help page which describes their methods of data collection and the strategies for mining these collections. Selected Search Strategies The most successful searches combined several common search strategies: the phrase search, wildcards and boolean operators (AND, OR). Composing a successful search strategy is always dependent upon the individual search engine and what features it offers. Check the help links to see what strategies are available at each search engine you use. The Phrase Search The phrase search, defined by the use of quotation marks, connects a series of two or more words into a single searchable unit. The words must be present, in the order given. For example: "educational technology" Truncation with Wildcards Further your options with a wildcard. Wildcards allow you to truncate a word, implying that it doesn't matter how a word ends as long as the root is present. In most search engines the asterisk is a wildcard and is used to truncate a word. So a search for educat* will find instances of education, educational, etc. "educat* technology" Notice you can use a wildcard inside quotation marks. Boolean Terms The three boolean terms are AND, OR, NOT. The boolean AND requires that all of the terms be present. The boolean OR is a broader search, requiring only one of the given terms be present. The boolean NOT is used to exclude terms. You can use the boolean AND to combine the above phrase with a term such as grants or funding. "educational technology" AND (grant* or fund*) Notice that when you use multiple boolean terms (AND and OR) you'll want to group like sets inside parentheses. Boolean terminology is a little tricky because different search engines require various attributes. Some search engines require the words to be written in capital letters. Some require the boolean NOT to be prefaced by "and". As in "educat* technology" and not science. Always check out the help link to a search engine. Proximity Proximity strategies require terms to be near each other on a page. The advantage of proximity over phrase searching is that with proximity it doesn't matter what order the terms are in. One term can be before or after the other term. If a search engine doesn't offer proximity searching then one must use a phrase search to get the same result (enclosing two or more terms in quotation marks to "tie them together"). The use of proximity varies. Some search engines simply use the term near. (and, one might ask, tongue firmly in cheek, how many words are in a *near*?) Some search engines allow you to specify the number of words in a near, as in near/3 to find the terms within 3 words of each other. If you cannot specify the number of words in the proximity, then the search engine will rank the hits with the nearest occurrences at the top of the hit list. The Use of Capitals Generally speaking, when you type your search terms in capital letters, you will receive only pages containing those words in capital letters. But if you type your search terms in lower case letters, the search engines will return both upper and lower usage. Lower case letters are a broader search. But capital letters have a value too, especially when used to differentiate proper nouns from common nouns. Searching Funding Databases Funded Research Database One of the best sources I've seen is the Funded Research Database at the Community of Science. You can choose form several funding agencies. In this example we will search the funded research from the National Science Foundation, from 1989 to the present. Although this is a tremendously complex and sophisticated database, it has an excellent help page. To find funded research on educational technology, enter the keywords in the field labeled All Fields: educat* w/3 technolog* The w/3 between the two terms is a proximity strategy, discussed above. In this example the more familiar term near is not used. Instead the more precise within x concept is used. The term educat* must be within 3 words of the term technolog*. Searching on the World Wide Web Research for this web page was conducted at a variety of locations. Our own print archive at GTRI, search engines such as AltaVista's Advanced Search and Google and resources from the Foundations for the Future. A Note About AltaVista The AltaVista Advanced Query page contains two text entry windows: Enter Ranking Keywords and a larger window, Enter boolean expression. The Ranking Window is actually the Simple Query window. Here you can enter words and phrases and use the + (inclusion) and - (exclusion) commands. You cannot use boolean terms in this Simple Search window. The hit list from a search you enter into this window is ranked by relevancy. +"educational technology" +grant* -science The above Simple Query search requires the word "grant*" to be present and requires the phrase, "educational technology" to be present. But, the word "science" must NOT be present. The boolean window is for entering more complex date and boolean searches. You cannot use the + (inclusion) and - (exclusion) commands here. The hit list is not ranked by relevance. Usenet Newsgroups There's a terrific newsgroup available, schl.sig.edtech which contains a good bit of information about funding. If you don't have access to this newsgroup through your provider, you can follow it through Dejanews, an ambitious project to archive and index most of Usenet. Connect to the Dejanews Power Search and try this search: Search Key Words     grant* or fund* Forum     schl.sig.edtech Date            From    Jan 1, 1999            To    Mar 1, 1999 If you're interested in a partnership, modify your keyword entry to read: Search Keywords    (grant* or fund*) and partnership* If you'd like to search several newsgroups at once, separate them in the Forum field with a comma: Forum    schl.sig.edtech,k12.ed.tech Return to Internet Funding Resources presentation