Truncation (The Asterisk)
An Asterisk (*) at the end of a term will allow you to search for different forms of a word with what you enter as a base. For example:
will return Education, Educator, Educators, Educate, Educated
whereas 
will return just Education exactly as you type it in.
This is a very simple and effective way of broadening the number of results you get.
Effective Searching
Proximity Searching
PROXIMITY SEARCHING Sometimes when you are searching a database, you find articles that have your search terms, but on separate pages of the article, only vaguely related to each other. In that case, the technique of Proximity searching would be helpful, because it allows you to search for documents that contain two search terms, in any order, within a specified number of words. Here is an example:
This search will retrieve articles in which the word india appears within 5 words of any form of the word travel, whether travel comes before or after india.
Phrase Searching (Quotation Marks)
Quotations marks (" ") will group words as a phrase, ensuring they appear next to each other in the record. For example:
will return only articles that use those terms right next to each other.
whereas 
will return articles that may mention Great in one part of the record and Depression in another part of the record.
Call Numbers
Uncertain of where to start searching for your call number?
Check out the floorplan for the Upper Level.
Using IDS (Interlibrary Loan)
If you find an article in one of the library databases that doesn't have a PDF icon, click on the 
button to access the full text. One of two things will happen: 1) either we have access to the full text from one our databases and the article will open in a new window, or 2) a window will open with a link to request it through IDS:
Click on this link, then use your Geneseo username and password to log into IDS. (If you haven't set up your account, you will have to fill out a brief form to do so. You will only have to fill this out once):
