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BLY 436: Animal Physiology

This guide was created to support BLY 436

Scholarly Searching vs Googling

Google, and other search engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo, and more, are fantastic resources because they search the entire web, gathering and analyzing data quickly. For instance, they can find the flavors at a local ice cream shop faster than you can call to ask! However, when it comes to your coursework, these search engines are not the best tool.

These search engines all use 'natural language' search. That means you can just ask it a question like you would ask your friend. Library databases, however, can not complete a 'natural language' search. Databases use Keywords and Boolean Operators to search, and learning to use them will help your searches become more precise and yield more useful results. See the next sections for more information.