Advanced search techniques in databases Library Research Skills Tutorial

Example You are researching the use of prescription drugs by the elderly in the Academic Search Complete database

A simple keyword search with “prescription drugs” AND elderly…

…retrieves 100s of results

But in most databases, you can focus your search in order to get more precise results

Advanced search technique #1: Subject searching

standardized terms and phrases Some databases use standardized terms and phrases such as subject terms, descriptors or subject headings to describe different topics

These terms are used to tag each article in a database in order to describe what the article is about

Using these subject terms can be helpful when searching for a concept that can be expressed in more than one way.

After performing a search, a list of relevant subject terms will appear beside the results list

Selecting terms from this list will limit results to only documents tagged with the term

Looking at the article’s record you will notice other subject terms that can be re-used in your search

Advanced search technique #2: Field searching

Every document in a database is divided into different sections called fields (author, title, subject, etc.)

Searching for words located in specific fields…

…will help you retrieve a much more focused list of results

library.concordia.ca/learn Library Research Skills Tutorial