A UST Libraries Information Literacy Tutorial

Database Search TechniquesDissatisfied with your database search results? Don’t

know what all those checkboxes are for? Think Boolean is a form of lawn bowling?

This tutorial shows you how to take advantage of our databases’ special features and search functions to get the best possible search results.

Database Search TechniquesOutline:

1. Limiters

2. Narrow with AND

3. Broaden with OR

4. Use subject terms

1. LimitersLimiters exclude all search results that don’t fit your

chosen criteria. Limiters can take a lot of the work out of finding the exact resources you want.

For example, if you select the limit, “peer-reviewed journals,” then you will have only articles from scholarly journals in your search results.

1. LimitersDifferent databases offer different limits. These might

include date, geography, subject area, or resource type. Read the whole Advanced Search page and the left side of your search results page to see what limits are available to you.

2. Narrow with ANDYou can narrow your database search results by adding

key terms using AND.

For example, a search for viruses AND computers will get fewer (and very different) results than a search for just viruses. All your results will contain both words, so they are more likely to be about computer viruses.

On the next slide, we’ll show a screenshot demonstrating a search with AND.

Search: university AND Thomas AND Texas

3. Broaden with ORYou can increase your relevant search results by adding

alternative keywords with OR.

With OR, you can add synonyms or related terms to your search. These will catch results that may be on your subject, but that use different wording.

3. Broaden with ORYou can combine AND searches with OR searches using

parentheses or the multiple boxes on database search pages. For example:

(fruits OR vegetables) AND (farms OR orchards)

The next slide gives a database screenshot example.

Search: (fruits OR vegetables) AND (orchards OR farms)

3. Broaden with ORA good, easy way to broaden your searches is to use truncation.

With truncation, you can search for different forms of a word. For example,

Catholic*

searches for:

Catholic OR Catholics OR Catholicism

4. Use Subject TermsDatabases use subject terms to organize resources by

topic.

Articles get assigned subject terms by professional subject indexers working for the database. The terms are listed and explained in the database Thesaurus.

4. Use Subject TermsA search for a subject term should get all the database’s

articles on that topic– even if the article uses different words for the same idea.

For example, “cell phones” is a subject term in the database, Academic Search Complete. For that reason, a search for “cell phones” gets thousands more results than a search for “mobile phones.” And all articles about “mobile phones” will be included in the “cell phones” search.

Always write down relevant subject terms and use them in your database searches.