EDI Fellows 2023-24 - Research and more: Search tips: TCC Library databases

The most common method of using the Library databases search engines is to employ a search strategy using Boolean commands. Boolean commands are used to narrow and widen your search results, as needed. 

Image: The Boolean command AND narrows the topic of HOMELSS to homeless adolescents by placing HOMELESS as our main search term, choosing AND as our command, and typing ADOLECENTS as our narrowing term.

The three Boolean command, AND, OR, NOT, all have different impacts on our search results. 

AND narrows and leads to fewer, more relevant search results. Often used to manage very large topics that, left unnarrowed, would lead to too many results, likely with low overall relevancy. As shown above, HOMELESS is a very large topic, and we narrowed that to the subtopic of unhoused adolescents, by using HOMELESS AND ADOLESCENTS.

OR widens and leads to more search results, often used to capture alternate terminology. For example we might want to search for articles that use either HOMELESS OR UNHOUSED as terminology describing individuals who are unhoused.

NOT narrows and leads to fewer search results by excluding results that contain a specific word. This is used most often to eliminate common sub-topics that we are not interested in, or to eliminate alternate uses of a search term unrelated to our topic. For example, we may be interested in EQUITY but not the equity associated with real estate, so EQUITY NOT "REAL ESTATE" might be helpful if we are getting a lot of results about real estate equity from that search.

Imagine if we had a databases of sandwiches. Yes. please!

Image showing use of Boolean operators in a database of sandwiches! Peanut butter AND jelly would get us nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Peanut butter OR jelly would get us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches, and jelly sandwiches. Peanut butter NOT jelly would get us only peanut butter sandwiches, and not butter and jelly sandwiches or jelly sandwiches.

From our colleagues at Yavapai College Library

In almost any database search engine you can type certain commands that will narrow or expand your search results in a variety of ways. The following is a fairly comprehensive list of search string building strategies that you can try out as needed. (As mentioned elsewhere, always start simple, and then increase the complexity of your search only as needed.)

Handy tricks to keep in mind

Truncation:  Uses the root of your search term word, followed by the truncation symbol to locate all possible endings of your search term.

Example:  pharm*

Finds pharmacology, pharmacy, pharmaceutical, pharmacological,...

Most databases use the symbol * or # for truncation (or wildcard) symbols. Use the database's Help tab for verification of the correct symbol. EBSCO databases use * for truncation.

Wildcard:  Allows for variations in the spelling of a words, when the wildcard symbol is substituted for the variable letter(s)

Example: sul#ur or col#r

Finds sulphur and sulfur; color and colour

EBSCO databases use # for wildcards.

Exact Phrase, "phrase searching": Use quotation marks to search for an exact phrase.

Example: "persian cat"

This prevents the search engine from searching each word separately in a phrase, and here, would locate articles that refer to cats that are the Persian breed, instead of just cats in relation to anything Persian. Phrase searching increases the relevancy of your search results very narrowly.

Make sure that your phrase is a "functional" phrase though, otherwise you may not get any results at all. If you are searching for articles that are about the effects of a broccoli diet on cats, you are better off using with a Boolean search -  CATS AND BROCCOLI DIET, rather than searching a phrase "broccoli diet cats diet"! Broccoli diet cats aren't a thing - so that phrase is not functional as a search term!

Stop words:  Stop words are very common words that are automatically ignored by most database search engines when we use them as search terms (generally, don't) 

Examples:  and, if, or, the, a, for, to, of, in, an, as, by

Use quotes, "phrase searching", if you have a search term that includes a stop word in it, such as "law of return"

Advanced: Proximity operators:  Proximity operators allow you to search  two or more words in relation to one another. Use the database's Help tab for to verify what symbol to use. Proximity is useful as it increases the relevancy of your search results without the exacting nature of a phrase search. If you want articles that include the adverse effects of Prozac, you can direct the search engine to look for articles that have Prozac and adverse effects closely together within the body of the article.

1. Near (n): if it does not matter which word appears first.

Example: Prozac n3 adverse effects

Finds Prozac within three words of adverse effects

2. With (w): if your terms must appear in the articles you are searching for in the same order in which they are entered in the search box

Example: physical w1 therapy

Finds articles where the word physical is listed first, followed by the word therapy, and where no more than one word separates the two terms.