ISF 189 & 190: Thesis: Building searches

In a search engine like Google it is possible to type in a search like "What affect does binge-drinking have on student academic performance?" and get results. That is because Google uses a natural language algorithm that parses out they key terms from the question. Advances in natural language processing are making search engines even better at this.  

Library catalogs and article databases don't (yet) work this way. It is necessary to build your searches by combining your keywords. Most of these tools provide you with both a basic and advanced search option. I advise using the advanced search. 

How you connect your search terms together can change the outcome of your search. 

• Databases use the Boolean Operators AND, OR, NOT to combine search terms.
• AND is the default used in most databases. This only retrieves articles that contain all of the keywords.

In this search:

• phrases are surrounded by quotes so that the search will retrieve those words together, in that order
• related terms are seperated by OR so that the search will retreive one OR the other in the results
• the two sets of search terms are combined using AND so that at least one search term from each box will be retrieved in the results.
   

The asterisk is used as a truncation symbol, telling the database to retrieve results with variations of the words. Minorit* will retrieve minority or minorities. The asterisk is pretty commonly used as a truncation symbol, but some databases use different symbols. It is always a good idea to look at the help information or search tips provided by the database.