Using ANDs and ORs ————————— Boolean searching may seem confusing at first, unless you already understand the logic. There are three Boolean operators that searchers use to combine search terms: AND, OR, and NOT. Use the Boolean operator AND to retrieve smaller amounts of information. Use AND when multiple words must be present in your search results (MERCEDES AND VOLVO AND CITROEN AND PRICES). Use OR to express related concepts or synonyms for your search term (FRUIT OR APPLES OR PEARS OR BANANAS OR PEACHES). Be careful when using the NOT operator. It gets rid of any record in a database that contains the word that you've "notted" out. For example, searching for "IBM NOT APPLE" drops records containing the sentence, "IBM and Apple are computer giants." The record will be dropped, even if this is the only mention of Apple in an article, and though it is solely about IBM. Use NOT to drop sets of hits that you have already seen. Use NOT to exclude records with multiple meanings, like "CHIPS Not POTATO" (if you are looking for chips rather than snack foods). Often, it pays to start with a "quick-and-dirty" search by throwing in words you think will do the trick. Then look at the first five or 10 records, but look only at the headline and the indexing. This will show you what terms are used by indexers to describe your idea and the potential for confusion with other ideas. Use proximity operators to search multiword terms. If searching for "market share," you want the two words within so many words of another. The order of the words, however, doesn't matter. You can accept both "market share" and "share of the market."
Searching by email ————————— MCI Mail and MCI Fax have a program called Information Advantage, under which online services and newsletters can deliver search results and other information over the online services. Dialog, Dun & Bradstreet, NewsNet, and Individual Inc. have signed up for the program. You can request a search by direct email to say Dialog. The search results will be returned to you via MCI Mail or MCI Fax. With Dun and Bradstreet, you call them for a credit report and they send it to you. With History Associates, you send them a message via MCI Mail, and they report to you.
Using BITNET discussion lists through Internet ——————————————————————— To get a directory of Internet/BITNET mailing lists, send the following email message:
To: LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU
Subject: (keep this blank)
Text:
LIST GLOBAL
You will receive a LONG list of available sources of information. A recent copy had over two thousand lines of text. Each mailing list is described with one line. All these mailing lists can be used by email through the Internet. Here is a random selection:
Network-wide ID Full address List title
———————- —————— —————
AESRG-L AESRG-L@UMCVMB Applied Expert Systems Research Group List
AGRIC-L AGRIC-L@UGA Agriculture Discussion
AIDSNEWS AIDSNEWS@EB0UB011 AIDS/HIV News
ANIME-L ANIME-L@VTVM1 Japanese animedia and other animation news.
BANYAN BANYAN-L@AKRONVM Banyan Networks Discussion List
BRIDGE BRIDGE@NDSUVM1 Bridge Communication products
CHEM-L CHEM-L@UOGUELPH Chemistry discussion
EJCREC EJCREC@RPIECS Electronic Journal of Communication
FAMCOMM FAMCOMM@RPICICGE Marital/family & relational communication
SOVNET-L SOVNET-L@INDYCMS USSR electronic communication list
The column "Network-wide ID" contains the names of the mailing lists. "Full address" contains their BITNET email addresses. "List title" is a short textual description of each conference. Keep the list on your hard disk. This makes it easier to find sources of information, when you need them.
Subscribing to mailing lists —————————————— Each line in the list above refers to a mailing list, also often called 'discussion list'. They work like online conferences or message sections on bulletin boards, but technically they are different. (Read about KIDLINK in Chapter 2 for background information.) All BITNET mailing lists are controlled by a program called LISTSERV on the host computer given in column two above (for example @UMCVMB). They offer "conferencing" with the following important functions:
* All "discussion items" (i.e., electronic messages sent to the
lists' email address) are distributed to all subscribers.
* All messages are automatically stored in notebook archives.
You can search these log files, and you can have them sent
to you as electronic mail.
* Files can be stored in the lists' associated file libraries
for distribution to subscribers on demand.
Where to send a subscription request, depends on where you are communicating from relative to the host running the LISTSERV. If this host is your nearest BITNET LISTSERV, then send the request to the address in column two by replacing the list name by LISTSERV.