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Fundamentals of Academic Writing - WRIT 151 - Elliott

Search Strategies

Here are a few tools you'll need to make searching effective and efficient - watch this 3-minute video before digging in to your research!

Video by Sarah Clark and licensed under a CC BY license.

  • Use more specific terms: "sharp-shinned hawk" instead of hawk
     
  • Use phrase searching with quotation marks: "bald eagle" instead of bald eagle
     
  • Use field searching: try searching in the title field or the keyword field

  • Use the Boolean "AND": hunting AND buffalo
     
  • Use the Boolean "NOT": "controlled burn" NOT wildfire for articles about controlled burning but not related to wildfires
     
  • Limit by date: More recent works are more likely to be relevant and accurate
     
  • Limit to full-text, in our collection
  • Use broader terms: agriculture may return more results than farming does.
     
  • Use more accurate terms: bovine instead of cows
     
  • Truncate terms using the asterisk (*) : child* will return results that include child, children, childhood, childlike
     
  • Try another database
     
  • Use the Boolean "OR": ecology OR environment OR nature
     
  • Use subject headings of one good source to link to others
     
  • Follow-up on citations from one good source: that's one reason why scholars list their sources!

This work by Principia College Library is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International