Search Strategies: Keywords

Truncation: Place an asterisk (*) to end a word at its core, allowing you to retrieve many more documents containing variations of the search term.  Example: replicat** will find replicate, replicates, replication, replicating, etc.  

Phrase Searching: Put quotations marks around two or more words, so that the database looks for those words in that exact order. Examples: "public health" and "prenatal care."

Controlled Vocabulary

Use the terms the database uses to describe what each article is about as search terms. Searching using controlled vocabularies is a great way to get at everything on a topic in a database.  

Boolean logic defines logical relationships between terms in a search. The Boolean search operators are and, or and not. You can use these operators to create a very broad or very narrow search.

• And combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, travel and Europe finds articles that contain both travel and Europe.
• Or combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, college or university finds results that contain either college or university.
• Not excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, television not cable finds results that contain television but not cable.

Notes:

• When executing a search, And takes precedence over Or.
• When you search EBSCO Discovery Service, your library administrator may require Boolean Operators be capitalized (AND, OR, NOT).

The following table illustrates the operation of Boolean terms:

Credit: Searching with Boolean Operators (ebsco.com)