Keyword Techniques: NOT
When you are searching for a concept and keep getting articles that are on a different but related topic, use NOT to screen out the unwanted topic when searching in the database.
For example, say your topic is tuberculosis (a lung disease), but you don't want to research articles on Public Health because you are looking at the medical side of the disease. If you search for tuberculosis NOT "Public Health", that will remove all articles with the phrase Public Health in them.
Keyword Techniques: PHRASES WITH " " MARKS
When you are searching for a concept, idea, or object that can only be described or named with multiple words, put the words in "quotation marks" when searching in a database.
Examples include:
"French Resistance", "global warming", "accounts receivable", "musical theater".
Avoid phrase searching with quotation marks where the phrase is not a common turn of speech, where there is only a single word, or where descriptive adjectives are used.
Examples include:
"beautiful artwork", "spreading propaganda", "terrible disease", "how a bill becomes a law", "United state's economy"
Keyword Techniques: TRUNCATION WITH THE * SYMBOL
When you are searching for a word or concept with multiple synonyms or variations, use the * (also known as truncation).
When put at the end of a string of letters, * will search for words that start with those letters and give you articles that include every possible word that could start with those letters.
Examples include:
surviv* will get you articles using the words survive, survival, and survivors
nazi* will get you articles using the words nazi, nazis, and nazism
war* get you articles using the words war, wars, warfare, warplane, but also ward, warden, warner, warlock, wardrobe, warlord, warp, warehouse, warm, warn, warble, etc.
