Search Tecniques

Keywords

You must think very carefully about the keywords that you use to define your search topic. Think around the topic as much as possible and record all possible terms that could be used. This is essential as two sources may use two different terms to define the same topic. For example, communication and interaction. Consider the following issues:

• synonyms - these are different words with the same meaning e.g. cancer and neoplasm - not all words have these but if they do they should be included in your list of keywords

• acronyms - this is where your keywords can be condensed into a set of capital letters e.g. UML is Unified Modeling Langauge - use both the full term and the acronym when searching

• alternative spellings - remember to try UK and US spellings for example paediatric and pediatric

• alternative and related terms

• international terms

• former terms (i.e. non pc versions)

• changes of place name

• broader and narrower terms - you must be sure your results will be pitched at the right level and broader terms can retrieve very general results while narrow terms may be too specific

Additionally, a lot of databases provide a thesaurus of keywords, which is used to classify the work held in the database. Use this helpful tool if possible, as it provides consistency when searching.

It is also helpful to think about how the terms could be linked together e.g. a search for the term government legislation may need to be combined with Scotland.

Boolean searching

Boolean operators allow you to join terms together, widen a search or exclude terms from your search results. This means you can be more precise in locating your information. Not all search tools support Boolean searching.

AND - Narrows your search by combining words. The results found must contain all the words which you have joined by using AND.
OR - Broadens your search to include resources which contain any or all of the terms connected by OR.
NOT or AND NOT - Narrows your search by excluding a term.

The following online explanation and tutorial will explain boolean searching in more detail:

• University of Albany's boolean searching on the internet

• New York Universities library interactive boolean search tutorial

Combining words

As well as using the boolean operators to combine words, there are other ways of connecting search terms to narrow down your results. This is a highly effective way of making your results more specific and relevant and most databases offer this in one form or another, so look out for it.

Phrase searching

Phrase searching is a technique that narrows your search down by searching for an exact phrase or sentence. It is particularly useful when searching for a title or a quotation. Usually speech marks are used to connect the words together. For example “Towards a healthier Scotland” will find results which contain that phrase. Some search tools may use (brackets) or 'single quote marks' rather than speech marks.

Truncation / wildcard searching

These search techniques retrieve information on similar words by replacing part of the word with a symbol usually a * or ?. However, different databases use different symbols, so check what is used.

• In truncation the end of the word is replaced. For example physiother* will retrieve physiotherapy, physiotherapeutic, physiotherapist and so on.

• In wildcard searching, letters from inside the word are replaced. For example wom*n with retrieve the terms woman and women.

Focusing a search

There are many ways to focus your search and all search tools offer different ways of doing this. Check the help facilities if the options are not immediately obvious. Some of the ways of limiting your search are as follows:

• Date

• Language

• Place

• Publication type

• Age groups

• Type of material e.g. you could just need to find case studies