Advanced Search Strategies Information Skills tutorial Learning Resource Centre Information Services

What this tutorial covers searching electronically –defining your search –search strings –operators –expanding/narrowing searches –electronic resources

Your aim…. to get a small number of relevant specific quality results….

Define your search do a pre-search analysis list: –topic –key words –synonyms (similar words) –spellings (e.g. Americanisms) –broader terms

Search strings a phrase put together for searching is called a search string example: "sustainable development" and ecology and ecosystems not forests

Operators to aid searching quotation marks limiting wildcards brackets Boolean operators

Quotation marks for phrases finds words next to each other –“wild flowers” –“landscape design” –“turbine efficiency” –“mad cow disease”

Limiting by year (e.g. only articles after 2000) by language (e.g. English only) by document type (eg review, report) by descriptor where available –ti = title –au = author –ab = abstractetc

Wildcards or truncation usually * but sometimes ? or ! or other symbol abbreviation specifies part of a word educ* advert* organi*ation wom*n cat* or felin* …… but what’s wrong here?

Answer: cat* will find  cat, cats  cattle, catch, cathedral, category, catastrophe, catastrophic, cataclysmic, catalogue, catfish….  and all other words starting with cat….  … not what is needed in this case!

Brackets (parentheses) order of searching by the search engine: –(brackets) –not –and –or water and pollution not river river and (otter or stoat)

Boolean operators named after George Boole, English mathematician Boolean operators are basically just…. AND / OR / NOT …….!

Boolean operators: OR OR - broadens, gives most results if you don’t mind either term e.g. solar or sun, or both together solarsun solar and sun

Boolean operators: AND AND – if you must have both terms - narrows, reduces the number e.g. results for only “solar and energy” together energy solar + energy solar

Boolean operators: NOT NOT – removes terms e.g. solar energy results, but without any references to heating heating solar energy solar energy + heating

If you don’t get enough results expand the topic – use more, or different, terms e.g: topic: why do foster parents stop fostering? List of key words for searching:( remember the pre-search analysis?) child carefoster caredisruption adoptionfosteringbreakdown caringfailuredisturbances placementfoster parentscease childfoster familiesfail selectionchild fosteringproblem approvalcarestop assessmentsissuesinterviews trainingvisitsretention Tip : find more keywords from previous search results

If you get too many results if you get too many hits, you need to refine your search narrow it down by setting Limits (by year, language etc) try different key words from the pre-search analysis list

More examples... (cats and dogs) (cats or felines) chick* or hen* or poultry or fowl* “contact lens” (schools and colleges) not (nurseries or kindergartens) Liverpool and “football club” not Everton

General tips... always check the Help facility be prepared to do many searches using different keywords use keywords from your previous search results the more operators and limits you use, the more relevant your results will be

Electronic resources databases and indexes to journal articles via the Internet all different - in layout, terms of use, passwords, and searching techniques look in the Help facility

Useful facilities in databases advanced search browse journals keyword search Google images marked results results subject search narrow by subdivision help facility stop words, wildcards refereed publications alerting services personal profile shopping basket

Evaluating your results What do you think of your search results????? Are they… What about… …relevant? …authority? …accurate? …coverage? …current? …content? …good quality? …sources?

Useful books in the library searching the Internet online searching search engine guides study skills section

Finally….. Please ask the library staff if you need help Happy searching!

Thank you ! Learning Resource Centre Learning Resource Centre Information Services