Lesson 12: CHS Search Strategies (Hints)

Keyword/Subject | Boolean Operators | Wildcard/Truncation | Exact Phrase

Generally, when doing a keyword search you are directing the computer to search the title, abstract, and text of records in the database or on the web for your keyword(s). The keywords in the search below were Roosevelt AND "new deal". In this search, we used the Boolean Operator AND with a phrase search using quotation marks.

Keyword searching on the World Wide Web and other full text databases, however, can be even broader because the search words or phrases are being pulled from the complete text of articles and documents. This is the biggest disadvantage of keyword searching: many retrieved items may NOT be relevant. To increase relevance of search results when doing a keyword search you should use more than one search term. Databases are simply looking for matches without consideration of the meaning of the term. For example, a search for articles on the country of Turkey can turn up interesting results.

When doing a subject search you need to know the subject that has been assigned to the topic you are looking for. The example below shows what part of the record you are directing the computer to search when you do a subject search.

Comparison at a Glance

>Keyword Searching	Subject Searching
searches in any number of fields and/or the full text of documents	searches only in the subject/descriptor field
any significant words/phrases can be considered keywords	search terms must come from the database's thesaurus
number of items retrieved potentially large on the Web	number of items retrieved potentially smaller
may retrieve irrelevant items	high degree of relevancy

 

Operator	Example search	The search will find...	Venn diagram results shown in green
AND	north carolina AND prohibition	items containing "North Carolina" and "prohibition." AND narrows a search, resulting in fewer hits.
OR	zimbabwe OR rhodesia	items containing either "Zimbabwe" or "Rhodesia" or both. OR broadens a search, resulting in more hits.
NOT*	mexico NOT new mexico	items containing "Mexico" but not "New Mexico." NOT narrows a search. Caution! It's easy to exclude relevant items.

Wildcard and Truncation

A symbol at the end of a word stem provides for all variants on the word stem. The most commonly used symbol is the asterisk (*)

For example, a search for educat* will retrieve
educate, educating, education, educational, educator, educators, etc.
Be careful not to truncate too far (e.g. edu*), or you will retrieve unrelated words!

A symbol within a word is called internal truncation. This provides for all possible variants inside a word or word stem. The most commonly used symbol for internal truncation is #.

For example, a search for wom#n will retrieve
woman and women
You may use truncation at the end and within the same word or word stem.

Look at the help pages for the database you are using to determine the truncation symbols used.

Example:

Example combining phrase and Boolean:

One more example:

The ability to search for phrases can be surprisingly useful. If a teacher suspects that something a student turned in was plagiarized, or at least heavily borrowed without citing or giving proper credit, just type in a phrase or two from the paper and see if it turns up elsewhere! You can also check to see if your own work is being copied without your permission.