Searching Basics
1. Be as specific as possible.
a. Example: If you want information on "heart attack" use heart
attack as your search term, not heart diseases.
b. Use a broader term only if you get few or no results using the narrower
term.
2. If there is more than one component in your search, make sure you enter
all the components in your search statement.
a. Example: If you want information on the relationship between smoking and
heart attack, enter your search as smoking and heart attack. This will give
you more specific results than if you just entered heart attack, which would
simply get you every citation containing those two words
Also, the more search terms you use, the fewer (and maybe more exact) the
results. Adding a term always reduces your result.
3. If you enter more than one term in a search (you can enter as many as you
want) and join them together with the word you will get results that have
both (or all) your terms, not one or the other. Both (or all) terms must be
present in each of the resulting citations. Here are two other ways of joining
together search terms:
Joining two words with
the word or will bring up records containing either one or both of the terms
entered. Searching for
john or mary will bring up
all records containing only "john", all records containing only "mary" and
all containing both names. This operator is useful when doing a search containing
synonyms, such as a search for marriage or wedlock. Using the or to join
search terms will increase your search results.
Using the word not
permits you to exclude records containing a certain term. For example, if
you wanted article citations on "blood," but
do not want to see things on "transfusion," you could enter blood
not transfusion. The results would not contain any citations with the word "transfusion" in
them.
You may use and, or, and not in any database that supports Boolean searching.
Most of the computer indexes available through Grace Library allow this. This
is not necessarily the case with many Internet search engines. These may operate
using different principles. Consult the onscreen help available with each search
engine to find the techniques to be used in searching it.
4. Read what's on the screen. Most computer indexes are designed to be used
by people who don't know much about computers. Since each computer index is
slightly different, to make using them as easy as possible, database designers
usually supply plenty of onscreen prompts to guide you. Generally these are
at the bottom of the screen. Keep an eye out for them. (Actually, the principles
of searching computer indexes are pretty much the same, no matter how different
the interface of one index may look from that of another. Once you master one
of them, you will find that using the others will be relatively easy.)
5. Do a subject search instead of a keyword search, if at all possible.
Subject versus Keyword Searching
1. A keyword is any natural language term you think of to use in a search.
Keyword searching will probably not give you a comprehensive result. It is
also difficult to control unless you know what you are doing.
a. In a keyword search you will retrieve citations that use exactly the words
you type, exactly as you spelled them. For example, if you type the singular
of a word such as "woman," you will not get the plural of the word, "women." If
you spell a word one way (e.g. theater), you will not get variant spellings
of the word (e.g. theatre).
b. Since there is more than one way to refer to almost
anything, in a keyword search you will get only citations that refer to the
topic exactly the way
you refer to it. For example, a search for "car" will probably miss
all citations that use the word "automobile." This means that to
get all citations on a topic you must run multiple keyword searches using synonyms.
This gets worse if you are doing a search with multiple search terms, in which
case you must do multiple keyword searches using synonyms for all your search
terms.
2. A subject search is performed using a subject heading
or headings. Subject headings are also known as descriptors. A subject heading
comes from a controlled
list of accepted terms, which help bring order to searching. Because there
may be many ways to refer a concept, to solve the problem of having to do many
keyword searches using synonyms, the index chooses one of the many ways to
refer to the topic to stand for all the variations. For example, Medline, a
major medical index, has chosen myocardial infarction as the subject heading
for the topic lay people refer to as "heart attack." By using the
designated subject heading, myocardial infarction, you will retrieve all citations
on the subject, whether its referred to as "myocardial infarction" or "heart
attack."
a. Some indexes present handy on-screen, alphabetically arranged subject
lists that are subdivided into narrower topic areas. (Examples of indexes
that do
this are EBSCOhost, and the Wilson)
b. Some indexes require that you look the subject headings
up in a printed subject list, usually in book form, but sometimes on-screen,
and then type
in the subject headings you are looking for. Such a printed subject list
is called a thesaurus. (An example of this is the PsychFirst Database on
FirstSearch)
c. Along with correct subject headings, a thesaurus will also give you broader,
narrower, and related subject headings that you might find useful. If one of
them is exactly what you are after, use it in your searching. Remember, always
be as specific as you can be.
3. If you have trouble finding subject headings for all the concepts in a
multi-concept search, you can always mix keywords and subject headings, but
your results may be less exact than they would be if you were using all subject
headings.
No handout such as this can ever take the place of working with a librarian.
If you have questions, please see a librarian early on in the search process.
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