Google's algorithm incudes a preference for the most popular pages and what people in your region are interested in, which usually isn't helpful for doing academic research. However, using the modifiers below can significantly improve your web searching results. NOTE: Some of these modifiers will also work in other databases, but you have to try individually.
| " " | search the characters exactly as written, e.g. "Ohio State University" instead of each word individually |
| * | a wildcard or placeholder, e.g. teen* searches for teen, teens, teenager, teenagers, etc. |
| - | use the dash (with no space after) to exclude unwanted terms or sites, e.g. -.com removes all sites ending in .com |
| .. | number range (no space), e.g. 2000..2020 searches that range, 2000.. searches all numebrs after 2000, ..2020 searches all dates before 2020 |
| OR | search one term or the other keyword, e.g. Speech OR hearing will search for all results of either term |
| site: | limits the search to that site domain, e.g. site:.edu limits searches to all .edu sites |
| filetype: | limits the search to specific file extensions, e.g. filetype:.xls for data searches |
| inurl: | searches for a term that appears in the URL |
| intitle: | searches for a term that appears in the title of a webpage |
| AROUND(#) | search for terms within # works of each other (proximity search), e.g. speech AROUND(10) hearing, searches for both terms within 10 words of each other |
If you want to be comprehensive, look beyond the traditional sources of information and seek out association reports, theses and dissertations, and special collections in archives. A few interesting databases might be:
OSU Special Collections: https://library.osu.edu/special-collections
Borror Lab archive contains over 40,000 animal sound recordings https://osuc.biosci.ohio-state.edu/blb/
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