Database Tools and Searching Tips

Phrase Searching

Sometimes, the best way to search for keywords is to use some keyword phrases. Keyword phrases are usually 2 or 3 words that need to be searched together. Some keyword phrases could be “mental health,” “climate change,” or “marketing campaigns.”

The library catalog requires keyword phrases to be enclosed in quotation marks. This tells the search that you only want results with the full phrase in the order you’ve written it. For example, if you want to know about the mental health of students, you should put “mental health” in quotation marks.

Some databases also require quotation marks around keyword phrases. Other databases assume that all phrases should have quotation marks by default, so you do not need to add them yourself. There is some trial and error involved in searching databases, so try a search both ways and see what gives you the results you want!

Search Fields

Most databases will default to either a full text search or a search that includes some range of key text, including the title, abstract, and subject headings. By changing the search field, you can change where the search tool looks for your keywords. 

A few of the most helpful search fields are:

• Title - If you know the title of an article or book, this is a great field to use. Just punch in the title and you're good to go!
• Author/Creator - The author field is useful if you know of specific experts in the area you are researching. It's a good idea to pair this with either a subject field or a general field with your keyword(s), there are a lot of people with similar names in academia! 
• Subject - The subject field looks for the subject headings a database connects with each article. Some subject headings are fairly universal, but there are headings that vary between databases. Use a database's thesaurus or subject guide to find out which subject headings to use in this field. 

Boolean Operators

The Boolean Operators are AND, OR, and NOT. These words are used by the library catalog and databases to combine search terms.

AND

Putting AND in capital letters between two search terms will bring up results that have both terms in them. For example, searching “climate change” AND “forest fire” will only provide results talking about both concepts.

OR

Putting OR in capital letters between two search terms will bring up results that have either of your terms in them. For example, searching marketing OR advertising will give you some results with marketing, some with advertising, and results talking about both terms.

NOT

Putting NOT in capital letters between two terms will search for results using the first term and excluding the second term. For example, if you want to research actors in theater, but not in film, you could search actors NOT film.

Truncation & Wildcards

In most databases and search engines, placing an asterisk at the end of a portion of a word will run a search for that word with all possible endings in place of the asterisk. For example, searching educat* would search for educate, education, educating, educational, educators, etc., all at once, without having to perform multiple searches.

Similarly, including a question mark within a word will search for that word with different letters in place of the question mark. For example, searching wom?n would search for woman and women.

Result Limiters

Most advanced searching has result limiting functions at some point in the process. The library search allows for some filtering to occur before searching, but most of the result limiters are found on the right side of the search results page. When using databases, most of the time there are plenty of result limiting options before running a search, with the option to narrow results further after searching.

Common result limiters include:

• Date Range - Limit results to sources published before, during, or after a certain date. 
• Material Type - Limit results to just articles, books, bibliographies, or other types of resource.
• Language - Limit results to sources written in a specific language. For most academic work (outside of language classes), you will likely need sources in English.
• Peer Reviewed Only - A "peer reviewed" source has been evaluated by experts in the subject the source is about and deemed acceptable. It is important to know that the "peer review only" limiter shows articles published in peer reviewed journals, but letters to the editor or other "opinion" pieces in a peer reviewed journal are not actually peer reviewed. 
• Full Text Available - Limit results to sources with the full text available. This weeds out abstracts or sources that are not available through VCSU from the specific database being searched. This limiter works well for research on a time crunch, but you run the risk of missing out on really useful information. If you have time, don't use this limiter, instead use InterLibrary Loan to request articles not already available through VCSU.
• Publication Type - Limit results by whether they are published in academic journals, trade publications, newspapers, magazines, or other publications.