All of these advanced searching techniques can be helpful in streamlining your search for information. Once familiar with them, each researcher develops his or her own set of preferred search strategies.

Provided that you are using the techniques correctly, there is no right or wrong way to search. The most important aspect of your search is the quality of the results you retrieve — are you finding information on your topic? Are your results precise, that is, is the information you found focused, or is there a lot of “junk” mixed in with the relevant information? The ideal search is one that is narrow enough to exclude extraneous or unrelated articles yet broad enough to include the most relevant articles.

Keep an eye on the quality of your search results and adjust your search strategy accordingly. This means you should:
 

• Brainstorm an adequate number of keywords related to your topic.
• Check to see what controlled vocabulary terms (subject headings /descriptors) the database uses for your topic.
• Try new arrangements of your search terms using Boolean and proximity operators and nest your search terms in parentheses as appropriate.
• Broaden or narrow your search by specifying the fields to be searched.
• Place phrases in quotation marks to make sure they are searched as a phrase.
• Broaden your search by using truncation or wild cards if necessary.

NOTE: the Help feature available in most databases can explain to you how to make the most of the database, thus ensuring that your searches are efficient and your results are on target. 

Now that you've seen how articles are indexed in a database like Academic Search Complete, it's time to use some of the powerful search strategies that the indexing allows.  In this page of the guide you will find information on the following search strategies:

• Controlled vocabulary
• Stop Words and phrase searching
• Boolean operators
• Precedence and parentheses
• Proximity operators
• Truncation and wild cards

An access point is a way of searching using an information tool. Each access point is one part of a database record that provides access to the whole record, for example, title and author are access points when searching the URI Libraries Search. 

The most common access points are author, title, subject, and keyword, but reference databases often allow searching by many additional access points. 

To help understand access points, imagine that you are building a database of your music collection. In the database, you want to include every possible piece of useful information about each item, such as:

• Title of the album
• Artist
• Artist’s nationality
• Artist’s gender
• Other band this artist has been connected to, for example Eric Clapton would be linked to Cream, Blind Faith, Derek & the Dominoes)
• Producer of the album
• Other albums the producer has worked on
• Tracks on the album
• Number of tracks
• Name of each track
• Length of each track
• Type of music
• Awards the album has won, if any
• Record label
• Other musicians on the album
• Year album released

Each of these bits of searchable information, or access points, would be placed in a different field of your database record. 

If you included all of this information, you could set up your database so that you could search by any of these fields, or a combination of them, for example you could search for every CD by a particular artist during a specific range of years.

Searching by different fields can also yield different results. For example, searching for Hemingway in the author field of a library catalog will find books by Hemingway. Searching for Hemingway in the subject field will find books about Hemingway.

 To see how field searching by different access points works, we’ll use Academic Search Complete as an example. 

Just as library catalogs use Library of Congress Subject Headings, elelctronic databases use a controlled vocabulary to index articles. That is, they use designated words or phrases, sometimes referred to as descriptors or subject terms, to consistently describe the topics of articles. This makes searching for articles more effective and precise. Just think, if you were making that database of your CDs discussed above, you would want to use the same words to describe types of music so that when you searched you’d get all the relevant records with one search. For example, when you enter your Hip Hop CDs into the database, you will want to decide whether you are going to call them Rap or Hip Hop. If you are not consistent and later you perform a search for all of your Hip Hop CD’s, you are going to miss the ones that you had categorized as Rap. 

Each database has its own unique controlled vocabulary. These terms are often based on the specialized terminology of the subject area covered by the database, for example: business, economics, zoology, medicine. This vocabulary of subject-specific databases is often very focused – much more so than the Library of Congress Subject Headings or the subject headings of general databases. For example, for the topic, allergies:  
 

	Database	Subject Heading
Library of Congress Subject Heading (Academic Search Complete)	Library catalogs & some databases (ex., Academic Search Complete)	Allergy
ProQuest Direct subject heading	ProQuest One Business	Allergies
Medical Subject Heading	MEDLINE (PubMED)	Rhinitis, allergic

 

Such focus makes it easier to find subject-specific information. Most databases have thesauri with which you can check your subject keywords and find out what the database’s controlled vocabulary for your subject is.

So far, we have learned that before searching the library catalog or a reference database, we first identify our main concepts, list keywords that describe each, and separate the different concepts with the word AND, for example smoking AND depression. In general, if we do not separate our concepts with AND, instead typing in words in succession, or even a sentence, the database will not interpret our query correctly. For example, if I type in, "what is the connection between smoking and depression?" I will not get very good results. 

While it is true that some databases are getting “smarter” and know how to break apart a sentence (for example the Web search engine Google), in general it is not a good idea to search like this. 

Every database has different rules about how they interpret what you type. Some will ignore certain words altogether – these are called stop words, and are usually very common words that would take up too many system resources if the database were to search for them. Others will allow you to search for two words together as a phrase, but will break apart any phrase you type that is longer than three words. It is a good idea to understand how the database you are using works before searching. This information is typically found in the Help screens. 

Boolean, or “logical”, operators let you combine multiple search terms into a single search statement by using the connector words AND, OR, and NOT. 

AND

• Use AND to find records that contain specific words or phrases.
• AND narrows your search to retrieve fewer, more relevant records. 
• Use AND to combine two or more unlike terms.
• Your search results will contain both terms. 

 

Boolean concepts are often explained with Venn diagrams – circles which represent sets of data containing the specified terms. 

 

For example:

 

Search = smoking

This set of search results contains information only on smoking. 

 

Search = depression

This set of search results contains information only on depression. 
 

 

Search = smoking AND depression

This set of search results will find information on both smoking AND depression. This essentially says, “I want to find information on the connection between smoking and depression.”

 

Using AND can be confusing, because people often think that the word “and” means to add things together to make a larger whole, however using AND actually narrows your search and gives you fewer results. 

 

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OR

• Use OR to find records that contain one or more specific words or phrases.
• OR broadens your search to retrieve more items. “Or is more.” 
• Use OR to combine two similar terms.
• Your search results will contain either of the terms.

 

Search = smoking or nicotine

This set of search results will find information on either smoking OR nicotine. This says, “I want to find information on smoking or nicotine – either word is relevant to my topic.”

 

Using OR can be confusing, because people often think that the word “or” means to choose only one thing among many to make a smaller whole, however using OR actually broadens your search and gives you more results. 

 

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NOT/AND NOT

• Use NOT to find records that contain the first specified word or phrase but not the second. Not removes any information from the search results that contains the second word. 
• NOT narrows your search to retrieve fewer, more relevant records.
• NOT is used to exclude a certain term that might otherwise appear in your search results.
• NOT tends to be used less frequently than AND or OR, but it can be very useful. 

 

Search = smoking NOT marijuana

This set of search results will find information on smoking but NOT marijuana. This essentially says, “I want to find information on smoking, but not about smoking marijuana.”

 

You have to be careful using NOT. The article's title or abstract may mention marijuana anyway, saying it is not the focus of the article, but that smoking cigarettes is. The article may be relevant to your search, but it will not be retrieved using the terms, "smoking NOT marijuana."

 

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COMBINATIONS

• You can combine Boolean expressions to make very sophisticated search statements. 
• Use parentheses to group search statements. 

 

Search = (smoking OR nicotine) AND depression

This set of search results will find information on either smoking OR nicotine combined with (AND) depression. This says, “I want to find information on the connection between either smoking or nicotine (because they’re pretty much the same thing) and depression.”

 

Most databases observe a hierarchy or precedence with respect to operators. For example, the OR operator may be processed first in some databases; the AND operator in other databases.

Consider this:

If the AND operator is processed first, the search statement dogs OR cats AND leashes will find records that contain both cats and leashes or articles just about dogs.

If the OR operator is processed first, this search statement will find articles about either dogs or cats combined with the concept of leashes.

Note the difference.

To get around this ambiguity, always group in parentheses the parts of the search statement you want processed together. This is often referred to as nesting.

So, if we want an article about the use of leashes on either dogs or cats, we would structure the search as (dogs OR cats) AND leashes. We could include a related concept for leashes and expand the search like this: (dogs OR cats) AND (leashes OR harnesses). 

Proximity operators are similar to Boolean operators. Proximity operators allow you to specify the relationship between multiple search terms by using the operators W and N. They are most useful when searching the full text of an article.

W (WITHIN)

• Use W plus a number to find records that contain a specified word or phrase within that specified number of words in the order you entered them.

• W narrows your search to retrieve fewer, more relevant records.

    For example, "careers W5 computer" will find records with the word computer within 5 words of the word careers. Thus, this search would find “careers in computer science”, “ careers in computer software”, “careers requiring computer skills”, etc.

N (NEAR)

• Use N plus a number to find records that contain a specified word or phrase within that specified number in any order that you entered them.

• For example, "military N5 intelligence" will find records with the word military near (either side of) intelligence. This search would find "intelligence operations in the military,"military information from intelligence sources."

Truncation Character

Most databases specify a character that can be used to search for words containing a common word root, with any number or combination of characters following the root.

The truncation character in Academic Search Complete is "*"

For example, operat* will find records containing operations, operational, and operator.

Truncation can be useful when you don’t know whether or not your search term will appear in the singular or the plural, for example wildcat* will find wildcat or wildcats.

Wildcard Character

Most databases specify a character that can be used to search for a specific number of characters, in any combination. You use one wildcard character for each character that you’re unsure of.

The wildcard character in Academic Search Complete is "?"

For example, wom?n will find records containing woman, women, and womyn.