1. Advanced search techniques in databases
Library Research Skills Tutorial

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

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

4. …retrieves 100s of results

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

6. Advanced search technique #1:
Subject searching

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

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

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

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

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

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

14. Advanced search technique #2:
Field searching

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

16. Searching for words located in specific fields…

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

19. library.concordia.ca/learn
Library Research Skills Tutorial