When keyword searching, use keywords that best describe your topic. The objective is to get a small group of relevant records. People, places themes, characters, time periods, events, types of information (i.e. ethnography) issues and more can be keywords. What words or phrases best describe your topic?
Try: And, Or, Not
- And -- "cell phone" AND distraction
- Or -- ("cell phone" OR gps) and distraction
- Not -- (Distraction and children) NOT adolescents
Use Quotation Marks, Asterisks, Parentheses, Question marks
- Use quotation marks when searching a phrase.
- Use asterisks to find variations...
- Flavor* = flavor, flavorful, flavored, flavoring.
- *Psychology = parapsychology, pseudopsychology
- Behavi*r retrieves behaviour or behavior.
- Use parentheses for searches like this:
- common cold AND (vitamin c OR zinc)
- Use the question mark for different spelling as well as singular and plural versions of a word
- Wom?n = woman and women
- Gr?y = grey and gray
- Dog* = dog, dogs