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Communication - EDST 260 - Oakes

Need a quick refresher on Boolean operators, truncation, and using quotations marks for exact phrase searches? This video is for you!

Have no idea what those things are? This video is for you, too!

This short 3-minute video reviews these valuable searching tools that save you time and effort!

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

  • Use more specific terms: television instead of media
     
  • Use phrase searching with quotation marks: "social media" instead of social media
     
  • Use field searching: try searching in the title field or the keyword field
     
  • Use the Boolean "AND": language AND culture
     
  • Use the Boolean "NOT": dialogue NOT theater for articles about dialogues but not related to theater
     
  • Limit by date: More recent works are more likely to be relevant and accurate
     
  • Limit to full-text, in our collection
  • Use broader terms: relationship may return more results than "mother-daughter relationship" does.
     
  • Use more accurate terms: toddler instead of child
     
  • 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!