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Example of a Search Query
| Too many results? | Too
few results?
Unless you want to browse subject headings, you will want to
use Boolean logic for phrasing your searches. When looking for
articles, you will want to be fairly specific. Articles tend
to be on narrow topics, and there are usually summaries of the
articles in the citations, or even the entire article. If you
look for a general topic, you will probably be overwhelmed with
results.
Boil down your issue into keywords, either simple phrases
or keywords combined with the connectors AND or OR.
(Note: the connectors do not have to be capitalized. I'm just
doing that for emphasis.) You can be much more specific here
than when looking for books. I'd suggest sticking to the nouns
and ignoring verbs and adjectives, or stick to concrete terms
and try to ignore the abstract ones. (For instance, there are
just way too many words to describe the abstract concept of
good.) Also, think of synonyms for your keywords.
Let's say I am interested in researching the animal rights
movement, and more specifically the moral or ethical issues
of using of animals in laboratory testing. Using Boolean logic
and truncation, I would type:
(moral* OR ethic*) AND (animal rights OR animal welfare)
AND (lab OR labs OR laborator*) AND test*
to find the either moral, morals, morality,
ethic, ethics, or ethical, and the phrase
animal rights or animal welfare, along with lab,
labs, laboratory or laboratories, and test,
tests, or testing.
March 27, 2007n?url=http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/uiuc_uis">Expanded
Academic ASAP, I got 8 results with the above search query.
Looking at the results,
I should have used the phrase animal experimentation,
because there are 212 articles given the subject heading animal
experimentation - moral and ethical aspects.
- Try searching by subject heading. In most databases
the subject headings are hyperlinked, so you can just click
on the word(s). (Though you may actually get more results
by this method.)
- Add more search terms. Try to think about what other
aspects of the subject you want the articles to reflect.
- Keyword search within a field. You can usually
narrow your search by using the Subject, Title, or Source
fields within the record. If the word appears in the subject
field, it's more likely to really be about that, rather than
being mentioned in the abstract or summary of the article.
Also, note any limiters available on a particular database:
date range, language, publication types (journal article,
peer-reviewed, dissertation, etc.). The subject-specific databases
tend to offer a lot more limiters than the general/interdisciplinary
databases.
- Try looking for more versions of your keyword, like
plurals or variations of the word. To look for variations
of a stem of a word in most databases, type the stem followed
by an asterisk (*). In a few databases, it's a !
or a + or a ? or a $. Consult the online
help for the particular database for truncation, stemming
or wildcards.
- Try to think of other words to describe your topic.
What words could someone use to describe your issue?
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