Research 101: Search Strategies

When you’re searching for a phrase, put quotation marks around it. This lets the database know you want to find your search terms together as a phrase, in that same exact word order.

Examples:

“capital punishment”

“grade school”

“climate change”

To learn more, see this video from North Carolina University Libraries:

Add an asterisk (*) at the end of a word to truncate it. Truncating tells the database to find multiple endings of the word.

Examples:

child* = child, children, childhood, childish, childlike

technolog* = technology, technologies, technological

nurs* = nurse, nurses, nursing

Boolean operators are used to combine multiple search terms. Using a Boolean operator tells the database how to connect the terms together in your search. There are three Boolean operators: and, or, not. See a demonstration of how they work at Roswell Schrock’s Boolean Machine.

AND

Use AND in between words in a search to:

• narrow your results
• tell the database that your search results must include every one of your search terms.

EXAMPLE: guns AND violence

This search retrieves records that contain both the word “guns” and the word “violence.” If a record only contains the word “guns” but not the word “violence,” that record will not be retrieved.

OR

Use OR in a search to:

• broaden your results
• tell the database that your results must contain EITHER search term
• connect two or more similar concepts (synonyms)

EXAMPLE: teenagers OR adolescents

This search retrieves all records that contain the word “teenagers,” the word “adolescents,” or both. OR is a helpful operator to use if you want to combine words or phrases that have the same or similar meanings.

NOT

Use NOT in a search to:

• narrow your search
• tell the database that your results must contain the first term but not the second
• exclude words from your search

EXAMPLE: “elementary school” NOT kindergarten

This search retrieves all records that contain the term “elementary school” but exclude any records that use the word “kindergarten” (you’re only interested in grades 1-6).

Use not with caution! You may inadvertently knock out highly relevant results. For example, there might be a very good article about elementary schools with the exact information you need, but if it also mentions kindergarten you won’t see it in your search results.

MULTIPLE BOOLEAN OPERATORS

You can combine multiple Boolean operators for more complex searches. Use parentheses to group together search terms that must be linked to the same Boolean operator. Otherwise the database will process your terms from left to right.

EXAMPLE: (racism OR prejudice OR bias) AND (“capital punishment” OR “death penalty”)