While brainstorming keywords and identifying how you might narrow or broaden your search can be very useful, there are other search strategies you can employ to get the kind of information you need.
As you think about this, remember: Computers are very literal. The words you use are the words searched for, even if your need is slightly different. So, we need to employ strategies to make sure the computer searches for what we want rather than what it thinks we want.
One strategy you can use to affect how many search results you get is to use quotation marks to let the database know when you want it to search for a phrase instead of a single term.
As mentioned previously, the computer doing the searching is very literal. So, for example, if you want to search for information on the actor Tom Cruise, you would want to type his name in quotation marks: "Tom Cruise" so that the computer does not search for Tom and Cruise as separate keywords.
Quotation marks are only useful when you want to combine two or more terms into a single search query.
Let's look at some examples from our sample question, with the quotation marks used at different points (or not used). How do they affect the results? Here's a hint: think about the children's story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Only one search result -- that's too small for our needs!
Over 400,000 search results -- that's way too big for our purposes here.
While 21,000 results is still a lot, it's just right for us because we can focus our search from this starting point!
As you can see, quotation marks are best used for short, focused, or known phrases, such as "social media" - but not for long phrases such as "effects of social media on college students."
Another advanced search strategy you can use to focus your results is the use of Boolean search terms: AND, OR, NOT.
Many search engines and databases use these terms automatically behind the scenes - for instance, a Google search automatically assumes you want to search for all the words you've entered, so it inserts AND between all words behind the scenes (to learn more about Google's search logic, check out this link). Some scholarly databases integrate Boolean terms into their search interface, as in PsycINFO (seen below):
There are three Boolean search terms:
As you use a resource, look carefully to see if it integrates Boolean logic, as in PsycINFO, or try using the Boolean terms and see if this brings you different search results.
A final search strategy you can use is to integrate truncation tools or wildcard characters into your search. These characters - which include * (asterisk), ? (question mark), ! (exclamation point), and + (plus sign), vary by database but all serve a similar purpose: they let the computer know that the researcher wants to find a variety of spellings of a certain word. Truncation tools tell the computer to look for a variety of spellings or suffixes after a root word (i.e., gene* = gene, genes,genetic, genetics, genetically). Wildcard characters tell the computer to substitute any letter in place of the character (i.e., wom?n = woman, women).
Library OneSearch uses the * (asterisk) as a truncation tool. For example:
Try a search in Library OneSearch using this truncation strategy.
