Roy's Search Tips Here

 

When your looking for something on the Internet the first place you go is to the search box. Sometimes you can get millions of results and just a few adjustments in your search phrase can knock that down significantly.

Take a look at a few simple tips Roy found that will help you refine your searching.

Try it out over on the right here......................................................................

Too many hits:

If your search results yields too many hits, you will need  to narrow your search. Try to combine keywords to make your search more specific. Use AND to combine words that join two or more concepts (i.e., women AND self-perception AND body image). Using AND will help you get a set that contains only the references that include both/all of your concepts. Your results should reflect a well-focused search.

Another way to narrow a search is combing terms with  NOT. Using NOT excludes unwanted terms. For example, if you are looking for information about betting but not in casinos (betting NOT casinos), your results will include hits containing the word betting and exclude those with the word casinos.

Too few hits:

If your search results in too few hits, you will need to broaden your search.  Use OR to widen your search. The results will include documents that contain either keyword.  (Using OR is particularly useful when a concept has several common synonyms or if a word has spelling variants). For instance, if you want to find information on bodybuilding, you will use bodybuilding OR weightlifting.  Such a  search would yield documents containing the term "bodybuilding" as well as documents containing the term "weightlifting." OR searches often generate a large number of hits.

In addition to the above examples, Boolean operators (terms) may be combined in a variety of ways.  For Example:

             alcohol OR substance AND abuse

             student AND grades NOT instructors

             toddlers NOT infants AND imagination

Truncation: most databases allow for the retrieval of variant endings of a word by placing a symbol at the end of the root word. For example, placing a symbol at the end of the word invest* will retrieve all words that begin with that root, such as invest, investor, investment, investing, etc.

Different databases use different symbols.  To determine the symbols used by the database you're searching, consult the online help screens or ask a librarian. 

More Tips

• The use of plus (+) and minus (-) signs can help you narrow down your results. These act like the Boolean AND and NOT keywords respectively. Example: +dogs -cats hamsters will give the same results as (dogs NOT cats) hamsters.
  
  
• Using quotes (") around groups of words causes most search engines to treat the words group as a phrase. Example: "dogs and cats" will give results with the words in the exact order they were entered.
  
  
• The NEAR Keyword will show you pages where the terms entered are close to each other. This is supported by very few search engines.
  
  
• Using an asterisk (*) at the end of a term will find all words that start with your term. Thus "mac" will result in "macaroni", "mackerel", "mace" and other similar words. This method of extendsing words is known as "using wildcards". At present, only a few of the bigger engines support wildcards.