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Search Strategy |
What it does |
Example |
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AND (Boolean Operator) |
All terms must appear Narrows your search Fewer results Use to include multiple unique concepts |
“coffee AND Brazil” searches for all articles that include both terms, coffee and Brazil
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OR (Boolean Operator) |
Either term may appear Broadens your search More results Use for related concepts |
“coffee OR caffeine” searches for either term in the articles
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NOT (Boolean Operator) |
Removes a term from your search Narrows your search Fewer results Use for concepts you do not want to include |
“South America NOT Brazil” searches for articles on South America and removes articles with the word Brazil in them
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Phrases |
Search for exact phrases Narrows your search Fewer results |
“ecological tourism” searches for that phrase in that particular order |
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Truncation |
Searches for all forms of a word Broadens your search More results Use to search for the root word of a concept |
Add an asterisk * to the root or stem of a word A search for “tour*” will look for tour, tourism, tourist |
What are limits and why use them?
Limits are helpful in focusing your search. Once you've done your initial search you can use some limits to help you narrow your results to a more manageable amount of information.
Books are assigned subject heading that indicate what a book is about. A subject search retrieves only books that are assigned the subject terms searched. Below is a list of potential subject terms you could use in a search.
If you cannot find a book using subject terms, broaden your search by doing a keyword search instead. A keyword search will retrieve terms in the table of contents in addition to subject terms.
Remember to truncate keyword terms to retrieve all variations of the term. Broaden your search by including synonyms and connecting them with OR. Examples of keywords include:
