LibGuides: Wuthering Heights Group Research Project: Search Strategies

Search strategies

For better results try using these search strategies when necessary:

Wildcard: The query behavi?r finds the behavior or behaviour.
Truncation: The query organiz*= organization, organize, organizational
Put a phrase in “quotes”. For example, “Gender roles”.

Use Boolean Operators to narrow or expand a search, and exclude irrelevant results.
For example: media AND violence, teens OR adolescents, psychology NOT clinical

Examples of keywords:

"Gender roles" AND "Victorian England" OR "Victorian Era"

Example of subject heading:
England--Social Life and Customs--19th Century

Keyword vs. Subject Heading

Keyword	Subject
natural language words describing your topic - good to start with	pre-defined "controlled vocabulary" words used to describe the content of each item (book, journal article) in a database
more flexible to search by - can combine together in many ways	less flexible to search by - need to know the exact controlled vocabulary term
database looks for keywords anywhere in the record - not necessarily connected together	database looks for subjects only in the subject heading or descriptor field, where the most relevant words appear
may yield too many or too few results	if too many results - also uses subheadings to focus on one aspect of the broader subject
may yield many irrelevant results	results usually very relevant to the topic

Truncation and Wildcards

Stop Words	Truncation	Wildcards
The following common words are ignored when searching: a, an, and, are, as, at be, but, by for if, in, into, is, it no, not of, on, or such that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to was, will, with	Use the *Truncation symbol ()** to retrieve variations of a word stem. For example: nurse* will retrieve nurse, nurses, nursed.	Substitute ? for one or more letters to find variant forms or when you’re unsure of the spelling. For example: ne?t will retrieve neat, nest or next.

Stop Words

Truncation

Wildcards

The following common words are ignored when searching:

a, an, and, are, as, at
be, but, by
for
if, in, into, is, it
no, not
of, on, or
such
that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to
was, will, with

Use the Truncation symbol (*) to retrieve variations of a word stem.

For example:

nurse* will retrieve nurse, nurses, nursed.

Substitute ? for one or more letters to find variant forms or when you’re unsure of the spelling.

For example:

ne?t will retrieve neat, nest or next.