Teach students to get beyond the basic Google search

I remember getting an email from a seasoned reporter who asked me why he was having trouble finding articles on his topic in Nexis, a database used to search for news articles and popular in many newsrooms.

When I trekked over to his desk so we could troubleshoot, I noticed the combination of words, connectors and fields strung together in his search box. It was a shock that he got any results at all. If you squinted, his search looked just like a viable search strategy that power searchers including...