Rare Book Monthly
Articles - November - 2003 Issue
Search and Thee May Find - How to Find “Lost” Articles
Google finds “lost” article on Steve Forbes’ book auction.
That has nothing to do with Steve Forbes’ book collection. By searching for “Steve Forbes” in quotation marks, we only find listings for the combination of “Steve” and “Forbes” together. This reduces the number of responses we get by 80%, all the way down to 70,000, which is still far to many to look through.
Here’s the trick. First enter the URL or web address of the site you want to search. The URL is that funny looking name that shows up in the address bar of your browser. It usually starts with “www” (you can ignore the “http://” that precedes it). In the case of the Americana Exchange, the URL or web address is “www.americanaexchange.com.”
It is not necessary, but I recommend putting the URL in quotation marks, as this will help filter out extraneous results. So, the first thing you do is enter “www.americanaexchange.com” quotation marks and all, into the Google search box. Next, enter the plus sign, that’s “+” (without the quotation marks) after the URL. Finally, enter the word or phrase you are looking for, in this case “Steve Forbes” (complete with quotation marks). What you enter into the Google search field will look like this: “www.americanaexchange.com”+”steve forbes”. If you look at the picture with the first page of this article, you will see exactly how to do this.
Once you submit the preceding search to Google (click the “Google Search” button), you will get a short list of highly targeted results. While not always the case, the chances are good that you will only receive listings from this website. If you look at the image to your left, you will see those results. Two responses show up, both from the Americana Exchange website. The first is the article we have been searching for. Now we know why we couldn’t find it under “S” for “Steve” or “F” for “Forbes.” The full title of the article is “Portrait of the CEO/Politico as Collector: Chatting with Steve Forbes.” We should have looked under “P” for “portrait,” but who would have known?
You will also see a second listing for the Americana Exchange. That’s because Steve Forbes was mentioned in another AE Monthly article. Then below that Google says “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed.” Normally, Google is used to show matches from numerous different sites, not multiple results from one site. Therefore, they cover up most matches from a single site. In this case, they have covered up a few more. Click the link below this which says “If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.” If you click this link, it will bring up every location on the site that contains your search terms.
Hopefully this will help you find those lost old articles from ÆMonthlyor other favorite sites when you need them.
