Composition I - ENG 101: Searching Basics

Taken from UCMerced Library Psychology 120 guide. https://libguides.ucmerced.edu/c.php?g=15926&p=87312

A. Boolean Operators: define the relationship between search terms. When you use a Boolean search, keywords are combined by the operators AND, OR, and NOT. You can use these operators in the database search interface to create a very broad or very narrow search. 

• AND combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. The AND operator limits the search because the sources in the results must contain both terms. Example: diabetes AND diet
• OR combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. The OR operator expands the search because the sources in the results can contain either term. Example: diabetes OR diet
• NOT excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow the NOT operator. The NOT operator limits the search because the sources in the results cannot include the term following the word NOT. Example: diabetes NOT diet 

B. Quotation marks: use quotation marks to search for a phrase

• "health psychology"
• "dissociative identity disorder" 
• "eating disorders"

C. Truncation: Use a symbol, the asterisk * is the most common, to look for variant endings of a word

• prevent* will search for: prevent, prevents, prevention, etc.

D. Combine search strategies: Combine search strategies for more efficient searching

• For example: (teenagers OR adolescents) AND "eating disorders"

After your search, the results page will show how many hits you received from the initial search. As you can see the original search for "South America" AND agriculture returned over 40,000 results.

With over 40,000 hits you will want to narrow the results. An easy way to do this is with the Filters under the search box at the top of the page. Click the box next to the filter you want to use and the database will automatically update.   

• find full text only or peer reviewed (scholarly) journals
• Narrow the date range by presets or a custom range
• choose source types, for example, academic journals, magazines, book reviews, books, etc. 

Use the Subject: Thesaurus Term to narrow even further. Click on the Show More link to expand list with more options. 

Did you narrow your results too much? You can always go back by clicking an X next to a filter to undo it by clicking on the filters option found underneath the search box. *Note: all filters will be displayed underneath the search box (refer to first screenshot below)*

A keyword search looks for words anywhere in the book or articles record. Keyword searches are a good substitute for a subject search when you do not know the standard subject heading. Refer to Keyword Chart at the left. 

• Use a visual thesaurus like Snappy Words, Visuwords, or GraphWords
• Use references sources like Credo Reference to get background information and key words. (See widget above)
• Most EBSCO databases have a tool to help you discover subject terms. See EBSCO Academic Search Complete > Subject Terms
• When you find a useful article, look at the database Subject Headings and record them as possible search terms.
• Each database has its own list of subject terms. 

Most of the library services databases are provided by EBSCOhost. You will generally see an opening page similar to the photo below. Our most popular database is Academic Search Complete, it has over 8,500 full text journals in many areas of academic study.   

This short video below demonstrates a basic search in Academic Search Complete. (Even though the User Interface has changed, the components of doing a basic search in the database has not.