Brainstorm search terms
- List words to describe your topic (global warming, climate change, etc.)<
- Think of narrower,more specific terms (el Nino, greenhouse effect, fossil fuels, drought, etc.)
- If you are not finding enough, think of broader, more general terms (climatology, weather, environmental change)
Use quotation marks and wildcards
- Force a search for a unique phrase by using quotation marks ("attention deficit disorder" "offshore oil drilling" "American nurses association")
- Use ? as a wildcard to replace a single letter (wom?n will find articles about women or woman)
- Use # for alternate spellings (harbo#r will find harbor and harbour)
- Use * when different endings are sought (child* will find child, childhood, children)
Combine search terms
- Use AND to narrow your search (cars AND trucks finds items that contain information about both cars and trucks in the article)
- Use OR to broaden your search (cars OR trucks finds items that contain information about cars or about trucks but not necessarily both)
- Use NOT to limit your search (cars NOT trucks retrieves information about cars but not about trucks)
Use subjects and keywords from your search results
- Look at the subjects used in articles you find and use them in further searches
- Look for alternate terms and spellings for your topic in the text of the items that you find
- Look for suggestions for other Subjects or Thesaurus Terms supplied by the database you are searching
Know what kind of search to use
- Subject - when you are looking for books or articles ABOUT a particular topic or a particular person
- Author - when you are looking for items written BY a particular person
- Title - if you know the exact title, use a BROWSE search. If you know a few words of the title, use a KEYWORD search
- Keyword - searches in more places, usually author, title, table of contents, summary, introductory text (Databases only) and subject terms
- Entire Document or All Text - searches all keyword fields, plus the full text of the item. (This search is only available in the Databases.)
- For more information - look at the Help link for the Catalog or Database that you are searching.