Natural Resources 1070: Ecology and Renewable Resource Management: Searching
 Tips

Below is a short video explaining how to use the boolean operators, AND, OR and NOT  to make searching for articles and books more effective by broadening or focusing your search.

The Brief Guide to Research Resources provides more database search tips.

AND makes your search more narrow by limiting your search. By using AND, you only see records that contain both of your search terms. Use AND in between terms that are required to make your search specific.

In the example below, this will only find things about both dogs and cats. For example, the search will not find anything that only talks about dogs but does not talk about cats. 

OR makes your search bigger and more inclusive. By using OR, you see records that contain any of your search terms. Use OR in between terms that have the same meaning (synonyms) or have equal value to your search.

In the example below, this will find things on dogs and on canines. For example, you will still get a more scientific paper that might use the word "canine" instead of "dog."  

NOT helps you eliminate irrelevant results. NOT eliminates records that contain a search term that you are not interested in. Use NOT in front of a term to ensure that the search will not include that term. (Some databases use "and not" instead of "not." Check the database help screen.)

In the example below, this will find things only on dogs. Anything that mentions puppies will not be shown. 

Quotation marks make your search more narrow by limiting your search. By using quotation marks, you only see records that contain the exact phrase withing the quotation marks. Use quotation marks when searching for a specific phrase.

In the example below, this will only find things with the exact phrase "dogs and cats." It will not return a result that says "dog and cat" or "dogs, birds, and cats," etc. The quotation marks will only return results with that exact phrase. 

Truncation and wildcards broaden your search by including different variations of a word in your search.Truncation is a fancy word to explain what the asterisk * (above the 8 on the keyboard) does. The asterisks acts like a wildcard and will search for multiple word endings. 

In the example below,  anim* will also retreive: animal, animals, animalis, animal's, animalistic, animated, etc

Tips: 

• To truncate a word that could have more than five characters/letters after the root word, use two asterisks **. For example: bank** will also retrieve banks, banking, banker, bankrupt, and bankruptcy.
• Be careful using truncation. Truncating after too few letters will retrieve terms that are not relevant. For example:cat* will also retrieve cataclysm, catacomb, catalepsy, catalog, etc. It's best to use the boolean operator "or" in these instances (cat or cats).

In this example, searching wom*n or wom?m will find things about women (plural) and a woman (singular).