Collecting Data

Tips for finding Data Online through Search Engines

Google has a bunch of advanced functions that can help your find data and/or documents quickly.

1. Here are some tips specific to search engines. You can use the operators discussed below and combine them to further drill down:
   • Search for specific phrases with quotes “”
     Ex “NYC Schools and Lead in Water”
   • Add “data” to a search:
     Ex “NYC Schools and Lead in Water data”
   • Exclude search words with a hyphen
   • Search for something either/or with OR
     Ex: Lead in Water 1990 OR 2018
   • Find Websites that are similar to others by using related
     Ex: “Related:LeadInWater”
2. Type in a search topic together with ‘data’ and see what comes up under the image search.
3. Search only with a certain domain by using site “site url: topic”
   Ex: “nyc.gov: Lead in water site”
   https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/monitoring-for-lead.page
4. Search for a specific filetype:xls (or xlsx,csv or pdf)
   Ex: “Lead in water filetype:pdf”
5. You can use this to find data or documents from specific agencies:
   Ex: Lead in water filetype:doc site:nyc.gov
6. You can find out more on google: google.com/advanced_search
7. Use existing data repositories: (Many of them have limited functionality (for sorting/filtering) but you can easily download data:
   • Government data: data.gov
   • Industry data: statista.com
   • Public opinion: pewresearch.org, gallup.com
   • Google public data: google.com/publicdata/directory
   • Data is Plural, an assorted data collection: spreadsheet
   • Open Access Directory (Life sciences and Academic): http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Data_repositories
   • Socrata as an online clearinghourse for their data: https://nycopendata.socrata.com
   • Research Data: http://www.re3data.org/
8. Sites to search for academic research:
   • Google Scholar
   • Google Books
   • Open Science Framework
   • Sci-Hub

Tips for collecting and saving Information

• Create a text document. Copy and paste all related links to where you have gathered content from
• Save a clean copy of your data and content
• Keep track of your work. Save edited versions under new name. Ex: ‘ContentHitchings-V1.doc,’ ‘ContentHitchings-V2.doc’
• Keep careful records of your sources
• Set up a spread sheet in Excel. Create categories for different data types.
• Keep track of your work. Save edited versions under new name. Ex: ‘ContentHitchings-V1.xls,’ ‘ContentHitchings-V2.xls’