Which of the following searches will be more effective?
A) Are school vouchers good or bad for public schools?
or
B) "school vouchers" AND "public schools" AND issues
The answer is typically B - keywords and phrases.
In most cases, you do not want to type in a long sentence or sentence fragment. Taking your search topic and translating it into the most important keywords that describe your topic is the most effective search technique. The cases in which you would want to use a sentence as your search phrase is when you are gathering background information, you are having trouble effectively searching with keywords, or it is likely authors will use such similarly worded sentences in their articles.
Other tips regarding keywords:
To search for two or more words in an exact order, place quotation marks around the phrase. The computer will only return documents containing that specific phrase rather than documents containing each word found individually anywhere in the document.
EX: "obsessive compulsive disorder"
By using three simple words, you can improve your search results. Boolean searching connects words and phrases with three Boolean Operators, AND, OR, and NOT. Depending on the operator, you can either narrow or expand your search results. Use the Advanced Search tab found in the databases (EBSCO defaults to the this screen).
AND will make your search smaller. If you are getting too many items in your search results, try linking another term to your topic using AND. When you add AND between two or more search terms, your search results will include all of your search terms.
EX: obesity AND children
OR will make your search bigger. If you are receiving too few results, try connecting a synonym to your topic using OR. When you add OR between your search terms, your search results will include either of your search terms.
EX: teenagers OR adolescents
NOT will exclude a word from your search results. If you are getting too many results on an unrelated topic, try eliminating a word with the operator NOT. Your search results will only include the term before NOT.
EX: cowboys NOT football
Library databases have predefined fields that you can search within. Limiting your search to specific fields can make your search more precise. For example, if you are looking for a particular article, type in the article title and choose Title in the drop down field menu. Use the Advanced Search option to search within a field (default search screen in EBSCO). Some common fields are:
EX: EBSCO
Limiters help refine and narrow your search. Using Limiters can give you more precise results. The location of these limiters vary by database, but are commonly found on the left side of the page. Some may be applied before your search or after. Common limiters are:
Truncation allows you to search for a root word with all of its different endings by placing a symbol at the end of the word. Symbols vary by database so check the help section on each database. Common symbols are:
* (asterisk)
! (exclamation mark)
? (question mark)
EX: femini*
The computer will search for feminist, feminism, feminists, feminine, feminize
