Tacoma Community College Library: Emergency Medical & Health Services: Electronic search tips

Know these search engine commands

To force the search engine to look for two or more words in a particular order and with no other words in between, use the phrase search. Place the phrase in quotation marks: "legionnaire's disease" "compartment syndrome"
If you are unsure of the form of a word (or the spelling!) use an asterisk as a wild card. For example: teen* will return results containing teen, teenager, teenagers, teens transport* will return transport, transporting, transportation
Use the "Boolean operator" AND to make sure that the search engine searches for all of your words or phrases. AND directs the search engine to provide results that contain the items on both sides of the operator, for example, intubation AND emergency
Use the "Boolean operator" OR to look for synonymous terms. For example, if I am wondering whether there is an organization centered around caring for obese patients, I might search Google like this: "bariatric medicine" AND (association OR organization OR society). This means I'll take any results that include the phrase bariatric medicine and any one of the other three terms.

This search would look like this:

Boolean operators AND / OR / NOT

Boolean Operators, AND / OR / NOT

Watch this short video (3 mins!) about Boolean operators and how they are used in search engines like Google and in library databases.

What is full text vs. index?

Full text: Most of the library databases give you access to "full text" articles from journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. That means when you search for and find articles about your topic, those articles are complete - you will be able to read the entire article.

Most of the library databases, such as Academic Search Complete and ProQuest, are set up to find ONLY full text articles.

Index: Some of the library databases provide access to full text items, but also provide simply the "index" for other items. What index means, essentially, is that the database provides only the citation information (author, title, year, etc.), and maybe an abstract, but not the complete article.

An example of a library database that provides both full text and index is ScienceDirect.

If you find the "perfect" article in index form only, contact your librarian. S/he may be able to help you locate the full text version.