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Film Studies 3845: Modern Israeli Film: Basic Searching Tips

General Tips

  • When searching authors, put the surname first.
  • Hebrew titles may be transliterated in various ways, so try variant spellings.
  • Literary works and films may be listed by their original Hebrew title rather than by an English translation.
  • Put an AND between words when you want to find all the words: Israel AND women
  • Put an OR between words when you'd be happy with one word or the other or both: Israel and (women OR feminism) 
  • Use truncation symbols or wildcards to search for variants: femin* retrieves feminism, feminist, feminists, feminine, etc.
  • If you get too much, limit your search to subject headings or descriptors.

General Tips

Truncation  - find all words starting with the letters you have typed.   Most common truncation symbol is the asterisk *
Ex, obes* = obese, obesity
      child* = child, childhood, childlike, children

Wildcard - used to substitute letters inside a word
Ex. wom*n = woman OR women
      colo*r = color OR colour 

Exact Phrase - use quotation marks around your term to get that exact phrase
Ex. "high fructose corn syrup"

Field Searching - you can search specifically in the title, the abstract (summary), or by author.   
Most databases have pull down menus that let you select which field you want to search.

Subject Searching

Many databases "tag" or add terms to the articles  --  similar to tagging pictures in Facebook.  

The agreed-upon, standard terms used in library catalogs and databases are called subject headings or descriptors. 

The subject headings in a catalog or database record will often help you locate more books/articles that are similar.  It works much as "find more like this" or "find similar" links do elsewhere.

 

Boolean Or Combined Searching

Your searches will work best in most databases if you break your topic apart and then combine the concepts with AND/OR.  This is called Boolean logic and is named after a mathematician

AND  - narrows your searches
   Ex.  Obesity AND Sugared drinks
 

OR - broadens your searches
    Ex. sugared drinks OR sweetened beverages OR soft drink*

 Most databases will have pull down boxes where you can select AND or OR.

You can also use these together by using parenthesis.
     (obesity OR overweight) AND (sugared drinks OR sweetened beverage* OR soft drink* OR juice OR sports drinks)

The above in pictures 
   OR - gets all the info from both circles
   

AND - gets only the info where the circles overlap
     

Demo: Boolean Operators