Here are a few tricks for getting better search results!
Full Text & Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals:
- Selecting the "Full Text" box ensures that you can actually read the book or articles which appear in the results list. It's almost always a good idea to select this option.
- Selecting the "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" box ensures that the articles in the results list have been critiqued by other academic professionals. When you're looking for a journal article, it's a good idea to select this option.
Wildcards:
- The asterisk (*) can be used to search for all words that start with the text before the asterisk
- For example: politic* will bring results for "political," "politics," "politician," etc.
- The question mark (?) can be used to replace a single letter within a word
- For example: wom?n will include results for "woman" and "women"
Operators:
- The word "and" can be used to specify certain combinations of keywords
- For example: "stocks and bonds"
- The word "or" can be used to generate broader results
- For example: "alaska or canada"
- The words "and not" can be used to exclude irrelevant results
- For example: "adventure and not vacation"
Search Fields:
- You can alter the search type by changing the search field.
- Useful fields include "AU Author," "TI Title," and "SU Subject Terms"
- This can be found in the Advanced Search option
Searches with Multiple Words:
- University science department
- University and science and department
- These two searches will retrieve the same results.
- "University science department"
- Quotation marks limit the search to materials which include the search text exactly as it is typed, so the results will be limited significantly.
