2024 Edition

CIRP - Research

 

1. In the URL http://www.adforum.com/agency/ the "top-level domain" is:
2. Which of the following is not a valid URL country code?
3. Which of the following is NOT true?
4. What is the keyboard shortcut for opening a linked URL found in a Word document?
5. Which of the following would be the LEAST effective way to only get web pages from (originating in) a particular country? (You don't care if you miss a lot of things, but you want to be sure that almost everything you retrieve is from that country.)
6. To find web sites hosted at a particular Internet Protocol (IP) numeric address (for example, 140.147.249.7 is www.loc.gov), the prefix of ip: followed by the four part IP number can be used at what search engine?
You have been asked by an economist to find information on the role of wind energy in the production of electricity in the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).  The requestor is going to be writing a fairly extensive paper on the topic and needs a fairly exhaustive search.  As appropriate for such a search, you start by identifying the basic concepts—those concepts that have to be in an answer (e.g., a retrieved web page) for that answer to be useful to the requestor.
7. Which of the following do you consider to be the best set of concepts for this question?
8. Which of the following statements is most correct for the above case?
9. Which of the following statements is the most correct for the above case study?
10. Which of the following is correct?
11. Which of the following is correct?
12. Which of the following is correct?
13. Which of the following is correct?
14. You are doing research on Oklahoma legislation relating to the use of pesticides. You decide to use the word "law" as an acceptable alternative to "legislation." Because of some research you did last year, you have all you need on the topic as it relates to bees, so you don't need to see any of the "bee" literature.
In Google, which of the following is the most standard (and most efficient) search statement for the above search?
15. In the above search, you are unsure as to whether you really want to eliminate the "bees" records. In that connection, which of the following statements is most correct?
16. Which of the following is NOT a tool for increasing precision?
17. You are researching the effects of exercise on academic achievement. You want to find at least 100 results that significantly address the issue. You start with a quick search on the following: "effects exercise academic performance." Which of the following modifications will most likely increase recall with the least damage to precision?
18. The following question relates to the use of commercial, fee-based (not free to all users) database services, (such as Lexis-Nexis, Chemical Abstract Services, DIALOG, Factiva, etc.).
Which of the following is NOT true of commercial, fee-based services?
19. The following question relates to the use of commercial, fee-based (not free to all users) database services, (such as Lexis-Nexis, Chemical Abstract Services, DIALOG, Factiva, etc.).
Which of the following is NOT true of controlled vocabularies (subject headings, descriptors, etc.)?
20. When distributing and presenting research results, there is now free, web-based software extensively available, such as Google Drive, that provides advantages over commercial, non-free software (such as Microsoft Office). Which of the following is NOT true of the free, web-based software?
21. Which of the following is NOT usually considered one of the main criteria for assessing the information value of any given information?
22. You have a blog. In your next post, you are writing about a city you recently visited. You find a couple paragraphs on another person's blog that beautifully describe the city and you would like to copy that into your post with an attribution and link to the original. Regarding copyright, among other possible solutions, which of the following is true?
23. Which of the following is a U.K. website that provides a newsletter and is useful for keeping up on new web research resources?

Searching Tools

24. Which of the following finding tools makes least use of organizing the content by human-generated content categorization?
25. From the point at which a new or changed web page first appears on the web until it is delivered to a search engine user on a search results page, a lot of processes occur. Which of the following series best describes the sequence of some of the main processes involved?
26. Which of the following is NOT among the web's largest search engines?
27. On Google's Advanced Search page, which of the following statements is NOT true?
28. You are doing a search in which one of your search concepts is President Franklin Roosevelt. In the part of your search that deals with his name, to most efficiently get all records for "Franklin Roosevelt," "Franklin D. Roosevelt" and "Franklin Delano Roosevelt," you would use which of the following?
29. In Google, which of the following is true?
30. In some cases, it would be useful to not have to "OR" a lot of synonyms by typing them all in, especially variant endings (nutrition OR nutritious OR nutrients). Which of the following is true?
31. Google's cache feature is designed to take you to ___________.
32. In your search, you use as one of your terms the name "Reuser." Google also finds "reusers," "reuse," etc. You don't want those. You can insist on just the word "Reuser" by using which of the following?
33. Which of the following is NOT true regarding your Google web history?
34. Which of the following is NOT true regarding a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE)?
35. In Google Finance, which one of the following is NOT a feature?
36. Which of the following is NOT true of Bing?
37. Which of the following is true?
38. Which of the following is a section or feature that Bing offers but Google does not?
39. Compared to Bing and Google, Yahoo!'s uniqueness and strength lie in ________.
40. Which search engine no longer has cached copies of pages displayed in search results?
41. Which scholarly search engine does NOT link to citing articles?
42. Which of the following is NOT a widely-known (past or present) metasearch engine?
43. Which of the following statement is most correct regarding metasearch engines?
44. Large, general web directories most typically provide which of the following?
45. In the Yahoo Directory, what does the @ sign at the end of a category indicate?
46. One of the following is more of a portal than are the other three. The homepage of which of the following is most portal-like?
47. (Live Questions). According to Google, about how many web pages contain this exact string of data: "singer-songwriter who achieved worldwide fame through many crossover reggae albums and singles."
48. (Live Question). You are planning a trip to France and find that the price of petrol there is 1.49 Euros per liter. You use Google to convert that to $ per gallon and find that the answer is which of the following?
49. (Live Question). Using Google, find pages on the website onstrat.com that have OSINT in the title. The total number that Google was able to find was:
50. (Live Question). Your hamster cage company is considering placing an ad on some websites, and it would be helpful to know which sites or pages about hamsters are most frequently linked to. Based on the linkages that Google indexes and makes searchable, which of the following URLs is the most linked-to site?
51. (Live Question). You are working for an advertising firm that has a food company as a client. They are preparing a campaign for a new cereal product and are doing research on past public interest in specific kinds of cereals. They present you with the following question: Going back several years, maybe to around 2004, based on Google searches, how much public interest was there in oatmeal versus granola?
52. (Live Question). In the website, www.onstrat.com, on how many pages does the word "extreme" appear on the page as part of a link; i.e., on how many pages is that word part of clickable text?

Internet Content

53. Which of the following online encyclopedias is least free; i.e., you may have to pay to see some or all of the articles included?
54. Which of the following is NOT true of Wikipedia?
55. Which of the following reference tools has a highly scholarly (particularly a college or university level) slant?
56. In which of the following online phone directory sites will you find an option to see neighbors for a given address?
57. A biographer is writing the biography of a person who was born in Billings, MT, on January 5, 1950. For flavor, she wants to mention the temperature that day. Find the low and high temperature in Billings that day.
58. The population of the city of Elko, Nevada, in 1990 was approximately:
59. Which of the following genealogy sites is NOT primarily a fee-based system?
60. You need a replacement top cover for a Kenmore Water Softener, Model #625.384200. Find the part number so that you can order it.
61. Which of the following is a Maori word for "sun"?
62. Which of the following websites is most definitive with regard to listing products or services manufactured or provided by the company?
63. Which of the following websites contains an extensive listing by country of company directories?
64. Your client has asked you to find an overview of a specific company, including its finances. The SEC filing that you would search for to get the most complete overview of a company and its finances is:
65. Which of the following shopping sites is auction-oriented?
66. A client of yours is just getting into the government market. They are a very small company, do not have an internal research staff and you work for them only part time. As a result, their government business development research has to be as efficient as possible, including searching sites that cover multiple relevant government database and resources. Which of the following, when searched, covers (searches) the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, Commerce Business Daily, Congressional Record, and other government resources?
67. Which of the following is NOT true of Google's Patent Search compared to the search capabilities of the patent search on the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website?
68. You are a medical researcher doing work related to treatment of asthma. Which of the following websites is likely to be the one used most frequently by you and your colleagues?
69. Given the fact that no web pages exist that were created prior to 1991, availability online of earlier research (or even recreational reading) materials could be an issue. Regarding old books (ancient Greek and Latin works, 19th century novels, etc.) which of the following statements is most correct?
70. Which of the following is NOT a term often applied to the billions of webpages that are not indexed by web search engines?
71. The following are types of material that can cause pages to be hidden from search engines. Which one typically contains the most useful information to a researcher?
72. Which of the following is NOT one of the major U.S. websites for checking out the veracity of rumors spread over the web, particularly by email?
73. Which of the following is NOT true regarding Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports?
74. (Live Question). Perform a search of the medical journal literature for the phrase "lichen sclerosus" for articles published from 1980 through 2005. Sort the results by "first author." To show that you successfully accomplished this, count the number of articles with first author's last name "Abdul" through "Aberer." The number of articles with the first author's last name ranging from Abdul through Aberer is:
75. (Live Question). Find the ZIP Code for 1306 8th Ave., Brooklyn, NY.
76. (Live Question). For U.S. civil aviation in 2013, what was the number of fatal midair collision accidents?
77. (Live Question). From Jan. 1, 1980, through Dec. 31, 2013, how many U.S. patents had Flow Control LLC in the assignee name?
78. (Live Question). According to the World Factbook, the countries that rank worldwide as top 10 in total area (including both land and water) are:
79. (Live Question). You are working for a government lobbyist and frequently need to track legislative activities of legislators on specific issues. You are currently concerned with natural gas. During the 111th Congress (2009-2010), how many bills mentioning the phrase "natural gas" were sponsored or co-sponsored by Representative Dan Boren?
80. (Live Question). Your company is planning a new product that will require an air pressure control valve, and you need a supplier of such a valve. Since you will need to work together with them on the design, you prefer that the supplier also be a custom manufacturer located within 25 miles of your plant, which is in ZIP Code 60651. Which of the following sets of companies match your qualifications (air pressure control valves, custom manufacturer, within 25 miles of 60651)?
81. (Live Question). Which of the following airlines have direct service between Pittsburgh, PA, and Boston, MA?
82. (Live Question). An executor of an estate has contacted you to find the closing price for McDonald's stock on Feb. 24, 1986. The answer is which of the following?
83. (Live Question). What is the coefficient of linear thermal expansion for magnesium?
84. (Live Question). In 2011, what was the compensation paid to the CEO of McDonalds?
85. (Live Question). A writer you sometimes do some work for is doing a biographical article on the major league umpire, Dutch Rennert. He needs to know who the other umpires were for the June 10, 1975 baseball game between the New York Mets and the S.F Giants. Which of the following is correct?
86. (Live Question). What was the last year for regular passenger flights out of Montreal's Mirabel Airport
87. (Live Question). On June 20, 1990 Tom Clancy spoke to a group of ____ ? Who introduced Mr. Clancy.

News Resources

88. Which of the following is a resource that enables you to find which newspapers are available online for numerous countries?
89. Which of the following news sites enables easy browsing by categorizing stories under hundreds of categories, subcategories and sub-subcategories?
90. As a political scientist, you understand the role of political cartoons in influencing people. Which of the following is primarily a collection of political cartoons and will allow you to easily keep up with this medium?
91. Which of the following is NOT true for BBC News?
92. Regarding the thousands of newspaper websites on the web, which of the following is NOT true?
93. Which of the following displays the full front pages of over 900 newspapers?
94. Google News retains most articles for:
95. For Google News Alerts, which of the following is NOT a delivery frequency option?
You have been asked to set up an alerting service to track developments, as reported in the news, regarding hybrid vehicles in the U.K. (their technology, development, manufacture, marketing, sales, regulations, etc.).  The requestor says she doesn’t want to miss anything of significance, but on the other hand, doesn’t want to have to look at hundreds of items per day.  Also, she wants to know about developments as quickly as possible. 
96. In terms of exhaustivity (not missing anything really significant), which of the following would cover the greatest range of sources?
97. If you were to decide to set up an alert in Google Alerts, which of the following strategies or search queries would seem to best meet the requestor's needs?
98. If, after you get the alert running, you find that you need to increase precision, which one of the following modifications might be your best option?
99. You recognize that blogs are sometimes useful when researching topics such as this, if you can find a blogger who keeps up with the topic. Which of the following tools might be useful for finding such a blog or blogger?
100. (Live Question). Search the archives of the Washington Post to find an obituary of Edsel Ford that appeared there on May 27, 1943. On what page of the paper did the article occur?
101. (Live Question). You need to find what the current issues are for citizens of Zagreb, Croatia. You decide to find what Zagreb news sites are on the internet. Unfortunately, you don't speak or read Croatian. Which of the following news sites emanate from Zagreb and are available online in both Croatian and English versions?
102. (Live Question). You are doing research on use of educational technology in the military. In 2009, Dr. J. Dexter Fletcher wrote an article entitled "Education and Training Technology in the Military" that very directly addressed factors of interest to you. Find articles that have cited that work. From the results you find, which of the following are authors who have cited Fletcher's article?
103. (Live Question). The September 14, 2011 White House homepage mentions that President Bush visited a hospital. What the name of the hospital.
104. (Live Question). On the morning of September 11, 2001 CNN was airing a commercial for what company before breaking-in and showing one of the World Trade Center towers on fire?

Special Content - Images, Video, Maps, Journals, Books, File Types, etc.

105. Consider (1) the descriptive words that can be applied to Flickr images by the person who posts the images and (2) the indexing that Google does for images. With that in mind, for identical searches on Google and on Flickr, which of the following statements is most true with regard to precision of those search results?
106. A realtor wants to see satellite imagery for a particular U.S. property from various dates over the past ten years. Which of the following geographic search sites gives the exact date for the satellite photo of a particular area and provides a search function to see older imagery as well?
107. An estate agent has taken a photo of a painting at the estate and wants to learn more about the painting. What are two possible tools for using the photo of the painting to search for more information about it?
108. Which of the following is NOT a filtering criterion in YouTube searches?
109. Which of the following websites has tens of thousands of maps online, both modern and historical? Its historical collection is particularly notable.
110. Which of the following is NOT a layers option in Google Earth?
111. You walk for exercise and you want to plan a route near your office that will be 2 miles in length. You will probably not always be on a roadway (for example, it may go through a park). Which of the following displays an option that allows you to do this?
112. In Google's free custom maps program (Google Maps Engine Lite), which of the following is NOT an option?
113. Which of the following is an option in Bing Maps but not Google Maps?
114. Which of the following is NOT true of Google Scholar?
115. When searching for scholars and researchers, which of the following identifiers is not usually publicly listed
116. For your research on the genetics of birds, you need to quickly get the full text of an article, "The Allometric Pattern of Sexually Size Dimorphic Feather Ornaments and Factors Affecting Allometry," written by J. J. Cuervo and A. P. Mller. Find the full text of that article online. To confirm that you found it, what is the first word in the second paragraph of the Introduction?
117. You have decided to change careers and go into the field of viticulture and enology. You want to find a school that offers a masters program in that field and is located in the western U.S. Which two schools below are an option for you?
118. Which of the following is NOT true of Amazon?
119. (Live Question). A naturalist has asked you to identify the publication year for the earliest book to mention the scientific name for Rocky Mountain Sheep, i.e., Ovis montana. The answer is:
120. (Live Question). You are going to be heading to the university library to check out a copy of Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. You decide to save time there by getting the probable Library of Congress call number before you leave for the library. From the web, you find that the likely LC call number is which of the following?
121. (Live Question). Who was the author of the first book published (other than just bibliographies or bibliographic essays) that had the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" in the title?
122. (Live Question). An English literature scholar is doing work on Dickens. He has asked you to find out how many times the word "silver" occurred in Dickens' The Little Curiosity Shop. Which of the following is the answer?
123. (Live Question). What is the physical address for the SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems?
124. (Live Question). You are setting up a program featuring the novelist Jennifer Chiaverini and are getting ready to write a notice of the meeting. You want to mention her Elm Creek Quilts series and tell the name of the first book in the series. What was the first book in that series?
125. (Live Question). Your boss is going to be traveling to Strasbourg, France. You tell him to be sure to hear the bells at the cathedral there, and you want to send him a link to a video that will give a sense of the experience. On YouTube, find short videos featuring the sounds of the bells at the cathedral there. (Sort the results by largest-to-smallest number of views.) How many of the videos have more than 1,000 views?
126. (Live Question). You are going to be driving from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C., to the Empire State Building, 350 5th Ave., New York, NY 10016. About how much time might be saved by avoiding toll roads?
127. (Live Question). For your upcoming European trip, use a well-known European maps and routes website to plan your drive from Milan, Italy, to Amsterdam, Netherlands. Find the estimated cost and distance. Using the options on the site's Route Planner, specify that you want the distance measurement in kilometers, the currency in Euros, that your fuel-type is petrol and that you will be driving a hatchback. Which of the following best matches the answer you receive? (What you get back may vary slightly from the answers here, depending upon detours, etc., that the map service accounts for.)
128. (Live Question). A program at work utilizes latitude and longitude to identify client locations on a map. What is the latitude and longitude of 1824 Ridgewood Circle, South Bend, Indiana?
129. (Live Question). An historian has asked you to find a photograph he remembers seeing on the web. It is of shelling corn in Nebraska, and in the picture, there is a windmill, several horses and several people. Confirm that you have found the correct photograph by identifying which of the following is left-most in the image.
130. (Live Question). A client remembers seeing an Excel spreadsheet on some government website that showed the estimated new cancer cases for 2010. They want you to find on that spreadsheet the total number of estimated cases. Which of the following is the answer?
131. (Live Question). You have been asked to testify before a U.S. Senate Committee. You will be staying at JW Marriott, 1331 Pennsylvania Ave NW., Washington, D.C., and want to see if it is feasible for you to walk to the hearing, which will be held at the Russell Senate Office Building, 2 Constitution Ave NE, Washington, D.C. Use the web to plan the best walking route for you. Which of the following is the correct answer (approximately)?
132. (Live Question). The image in the upper left corner of the page with the URL extremesearcher.com/travel/index.html has what format, file size and dimensions?
133. (Live Question). An academic researcher at the University of Calgary needs to get her hands on the 1963 edition of a Listener's history of music A book for any concert-goer gramophonist or radio listener by P A Scholes. Are there any libraries in Calgary that have the book? If not, in what other libraries in Canada may one find a copy?
134. (Live Question). A researcher at the American Restaurant Association is working on a presentation about the cost of food and meals at famous United States restaurants during the past 100 years. The Brown Derby is a legendary restaurant in Los Angeles/Hollywood. What was the cost of a plate of spaghetti (aka "Spaghetti Derby") in 1947?
135. (Live Question). A real estate developer is working with a franchisee of a restaurant
chain who is considering opening locations near major league baseball
stadiums. They want to learn about chain restaurants near Wrigley Field. The chain restaurants nearest the stadium include
136. (Live Question). Which of the following gas stations is not located in Cincinnati OH with a zip code of 45230?

People Search / Research

137. Which of these people search engines may give an individual's age (for those in the U.S.) for free (not just an age range)?
138. Which of the following will lead you to extensive collections of public records from which information can be obtained without cost to the user?
You have been asked to find as much as you can about the man who lives at, and probably owns, 204 N. Queen Street in Chestertown, MD 21620.  The requestor would not say why he needs the information.  
139. (Live Question). His first name is:
140. (Live Question). His phone number is:
141. (Live Question). He probably has a son whose first name is:
142. (Live Question). His neighbors (currently or recently) include people with the following last names:
143. (Live Question). Find an estimate of what might be a likely sale price were the house to be put on the market. Which of the following is closest to the number you found?
144. (Live Question). His political party is:
145. (Live Question). What, approximately, is the median household income for that ZIP Code?
146. (Live Question). What is the approximate birth year of Carol T. Jewell who lives on Loudon Heights Road in Charleston, WV?
147. (Live Question). You want to send a birthday card to Louis Pope (formerly of Laurel, MD, now living in Fulton MD). Find his birthday.
148. (Live Question). Who were the senators from Oklahoma in June 1933?
149. (Live Question). You are helping with some genealogical research. In what month and year did Lloyd Gale of Maryland die? (It is believed to have been sometime between 1960 and 2000.)
150. (Live Question). Your boss has a meeting scheduled with actor Mark Wahlberg. S would like some background. What are the names and years of birth of Wahlberg's four children.

Social and Professional Networking

151. In Twitter, changing a search term from just a word, e.g., Egypt, to that word with a hashtag in front of it, e.g., #Egypt, will:
152. Which of the following is NOT a search qualifier in Twitter searches?
153. When searching for people, LinkedIn provides searchability for:
154. When looking at results from a search for tweets from each of these Twitter search engines, which one has a filter for tweets geographically close to the searcher's location?
155. A researcher wants to find people with connections (business or social) to employees at Company X and who also are interested in a particular television series. Which social network will let you search for people in this way?
156. A news event is happening now. To find links to the latest reports from the professional media and social media, from the past hour about an on-going news event, you might turn to Twitter for links to the latest news. When searching tweets from each of these Twitter search engines, which one has both a left-hand filter for tweets that include links (likely pointing to news reports) and a limit for the past hour?
157. (Live Question). On March 11, Rep Tim Walberg (R-Michigan) deleted a tweet. What did the tweet say?