VM-1 & VM-2 Resource Guide

Save yourself time and aggravation by thinking about your search for information before you get too far down the primrose path...

1.  Choose the right tool for the job.

What kind of information do you need? Background information available in a textbook, or the latest primary research available in a journal article?

2.  Know thy search engine.

What's included in your resource? What's not included? How does it search?

3.  Think before you search.

Break your topic into concepts. Think about your keywords, synonyms, alternative spellings, etc.

4.  Searching is a repetitive process.

There's no one perfect search engine (or one perfect way to get to the information).

Truncation

Find all variations of words starting with the letters you have typed. The most common truncation symbol is the asterisk (*).

• immuno* = immunogy, immunologist, immunotherapy, etc.
• Child* = children, childhood, childlike, etc. 

Caution:

• Use as many letters as you can to capture the relevant terms you need. (Think about why searching cat* would not be helpful)
• Use truncation carefully in PubMed. Truncation turns off the automatic term mapping feature -- try your search without truncation first.

Wildcard

Used to substitute letters inside a word. The asterisk (*) is also common here.

• Wom*n = woman OR women
• Colo*r = color OR colour 

Exact Phrase

Use quotation marks (" ") around your term to get that exact phrase in your search results.

• "high fructose corn syrup" (this gets you more specific results than high AND fructose AND corn AND syrup)
• "executive function"

Field Searching

You can search specifically within 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 key terms to the articles. The controlled terms (standard, agreed-upon terms for the topic) are often called subject heading or descriptors. In PubMed, the terms are called MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Subject searching allows you to bring similar articles together even if the keywords used are different.

Species Names

When searching the veterinary literature, think about different terminology used for your species.

• Horse, equine, equus, equid

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 helps make your searches either narrower or broader.

AND - narrows your searches

• Cavities AND Sugared drinks (finds results that feature both terms)

OR - broadens your searches

• sugared drinks OR sweetened beverages OR soft drink* (finds results with at least one of the terms)

 Most databases will have pull down boxes where you can select AND or OR. You can also use these together by using parenthesis:

(cavities OR tooth decay OR dental caries) 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