How have you searched electronic databases in the past? Via keywords, subject headings or both?
Keyword searching is useful when you want to combine two or more terms located anywhere in the record.
Boolean searching (the AND, OR and NOT commands) allow you to narrow, broaden or eliminate a portion of your results. Boolean logic uses words called operators to help expand, reduce or limit a search result. The most common ones are: AND, OR and NOT.
AND indicates that all terms must be in a record: example, women and homelessness
OR indicates that any of the terms may be present: example, oil or petroleum
NOT indicates that one or more terms should be excluded: example, depression not economic.
AND searches are helpful when you want to combine two or more concepts in the same search.
OR searches are helpful when you want to do a comprehensive search.
NOT searches are helpful when you need to exclude certain records from the results.
More than one Boolean operator may appear in a search. This approach is called nesting. For example:
World war II and (germany or japan)
Truncation allows for variant spelling and endings (adjectival, plural).
Truncation allow you also to expand the number of results you get by ending the word at its root. The symbol for truncation is usually an asterisk (*). For example, students and psycholog* will retrieve materials that include Students and psychology, psychologists, psychological, etc.
The question mark may also be used at the beginning or middle of a word.
For example, wom*n allows for woman and women.
