Search Tips
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This document provides tips and instructions for improving research skills. It discusses different types of searches like keyword, Boolean, and subject searching using a thesaurus. It provides examples of search strings using keywords and Boolean operators. It also discusses limiting search results, saving information, finding cited works, and using reference management software to organize sources.
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Search Tips
- 2. SEARCH TIPS Sample research question: What causes poverty?
- 3. TYPES OF SEARCHING Keyword searching Boolean Searching AND OR Subject searching Thesaurus
- 4. KEYWORD SEARCH What causes poverty?
- 6. OR poverty welfare poor poverty OR poor OR welfare
- 7. EXAMPLE SEARCHES poverty AND education poverty OR poor OR welfare education AND (poverty OR poor OR welfare) (early childhood education OR preschool OR education) AND (poverty OR poor or welfare) “early childhood education”
- 8. SUBJECT SEARCHING Uses the Thesaurus, Subject Headings, or Subject Terms Predetermined list of subjects and related terms used to standardize the descriptions of articles in a database. You can select and search for synonyms, related, narrower, and/or preferred terms.
- 9. LIMITING YOUR RESULTS Look on the left side of the screen for ways to limit your results Full Text Scholarly / Peer-Reviewed Specific date range Subject Publication Type
- 10. SAVING INFORMATION FOR LATER Email items to yourself You can send things to a non-Belmont address if you prefer Look for “Sign In” link Sign in (you may have to create an account) to save items to look at later Signing in will also let you save an entire search in addition to individual items
- 11. FINDING CITED WORKS Using the reference list from an article isn’t cheating – it’s smart research! Use OneSearch Start with the article title and add other details as needed to see if we have access to the item InterLibrary Loan can provide the item if we don’t have it, but may take 3-5 days.
- 12. REFERENCE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE Also known as citation management software personal bibliographic management software Software designed to help you keep track of your references (sources) for all of your projects in one place May also allow you to format citations and import them into Word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_sof tware
Editor's Notes
- Learn ways to improve your search skills and some tips and tricks that can make the research process work a little more smoothly for you.
- There are two types of searching – keyword (what you usually do in any search box) and subject searching. We’ll talk about both!
- depending on the question, you may be able to type it in to a search box and get useful results. This is not always the case, though, so be prepared to work a little more for some topics.
- The thesaurus or subject heading section of a resource is the controlled vocabulary list of subjects and related terms used to standardize the descriptions of resources in the database. This is where you may discover that the colloquial term is not the official term for something and you can improve your search dramatically by using the official term. You can select and search for synonyms, related, and preferred terms. You can automatically add terms to your search from the thesaurus, or you can use it to get ideas for new search terms that you type in yourself.