Search Tools
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Search tools help make your keywords even more effective for finding information. Some types of search tools include:
Boolean Expressions (Connector Words)
Boolean logic uses connector words AND, OR, NOT to combine words in a way that allows you to refine your search to include or exclude specific terms.
AND
will only return results containing both (or all) keywords
eg, women AND sport
Results containing both women AND sport are shaded in orange.
OR
will return results for either keyword
eg, gender OR sex
Results containing either gender OR sex are shaded in orange.
NOT
excludes a keyword
eg, media NOT radio
Results containing media NOT radio are shaded in orange.
Note: In some databases you may need to use symbols such as '+' '-' or '|' instead of the words AND, OR or NOT. Check the HELP section in the database you are searching to find out if the operator is available.
Truncation and Wildcards
Truncation and Wildcards find variations of a term.
A truncation symbol replaces any number of letters (eg sport will return sports, sporting, sportsmen).
Truncation is useful to pick up word plurals and other variants of a word.
Use Wildcards to replace zero or one letter in a word. For example, wom?n will return women or woman.
Wildcards are useful for spelling variations between UK English and US English.
Note: The availability of truncation and wildcards can depend upon the database being searched. You may also find that different databases use different symbols to stand for truncation and wildcards. Check the HELP section in the database you are searching to find out if this function is available.
Nesting
Nesting refers to the use of brackets around combinations of keywords to show the order in which the search equation should be executed.
eg (women AND sport) AND (media NOT radio)
This would mean that the search facility would look for
- information that contains both the words women and sport
- information containing the word media that does not mention radio
- the search facility will then combine both the search groups with AND
This will result in information on women, sport and the media, but would not include any information that contains the term radio.
Note: The availability of nesting can depend upon the database being searched. Check the HELP section in the database you are searching to find out if nesting is available.
Phrase Searching
Phrase searching can be used to search for a phrase in a database, through the use of "quotation marks". For example, you could search for "anti-doping trials".
Note: The availability of phrase searching depends on the database being searched. Check the HELP section.
Proximity Operators
Proximity Operators make sure that two or more words are close to each other in the results of the search.
WITHIN/(number) is used to make sure that the words are no more than a certain number of words apart. For example, women WITHIN/3 sport will find the word women where it is only three or less words away from the word sport.
NEAR is used to find words in the same sentence.
For example, women NEAR sport will find the word women in the same sentence as the word sport.
PRE/(number) is used to make sure that one word comes before another word. For example, women pre/3 sport will find the word women where is it three or less words before the word sport.
ADJ is used to make sure that the words are next to each other. For example, women ADJ sport will find the phrases sport women or women sport.
Note: The availability of proximity searching can depend upon the database being searched. Check the HELP section in the database you are searching to find out if the operator is available.
Limiters
Limiters restrict a search to particular criteria. Common limiters include date, language, format, place and author. For example, "women athletes" AND (publication date) 1998-2000 AND (language) English AND Australia
This would find information that is on women athletes in Australia written in English between 1998 and 2000.
Note: The availability of limiters can depend upon the database being searched. Check the HELP section in the database you are searching to find out if the limit is available.
Field Searching
Field searching can be used to find words in a specific field of a record, such as the subject, article title or within the full text of the article.
For example, TITLE(sport) will only find articles that have the word sport in the title of the article.
Note: The availability of field searching can depend upon the database being searched. Check the HELP section in the database you are searching to find out if field searching is available.
Using Help
Different databases use different search tools, and may also use different symbols to stand for search tools such as truncation.
To check which search tools are available, and what format they are in, check the HELP section for the database you wish to search.
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