Use the following tips to develop a successful search strategy:
1. Have a topic.
Many college students deal with eating disorder issues
2. Identify the main concepts.
College students
Eating disorders
3. Think of other terms or synonyms for the main concepts.
College students - university students, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior
Eating disorders - anorexia, pica, bulimia
4. Determine what types of sources you want to use.
Journal Articles
Magazine Articles
Newspapers
Books
Use AND/OR (Boolean Operators) to combine concepts. These strategies are universal - you can use them in any databases, catalogs, or search engines (even Google!).
AND - narrows the search
College Student AND Eating Disorder
AND - gets info when both concepts are present
OR - broadens the search
College student OR Freshman OR Junior
OR - gets info if any of the concepts are present
Group synonyms together using parenthesis.
(eating disorder OR anorexia) AND (college student OR Freshman OR Sophomore OR Junior OR Senior)
The Search Strategy Builder helps you build a search string that you can use in any database, catalog, or search engine.
Truncation - finds words starting with the word stem you have typed. Most common truncation symbol is the asterisk *
obes* = obese, obesity
child* = child, childhood, childlike, children
Exact Phrase - use quotation marks for exact phrase(s)
"high fructose corn syrup"
Wildcard - used to substitute letters inside a word
wom?n = woman OR women
colo?r = color OR colour
Subject Searching - a precise search using standardized subject terms in library catalogs and databases.
