Advanced Searching Techniques

1
Advanced Searching Techniques

• LIB 120
• Amanda Izenstark
• adapted from Prof. Peter Larsens presentation
  of the same name

2
What are the basic techniques?

• Good selection of resources
• Good selection of search terms
• Basic Boolean -- AND, OR, and (sometimes) NOT
• Understanding Keyword vs Subject Searching
• Evaluation of results, re-searching as necessary

3
Advanced Techniques

• Controlled Vocabulary
• Field Searching
• Stop Words and Phrases
• Proximity Operators
• Truncation and Wildcards

4
Controlled Vocabulary

• You already know about this -- its how you do
  subject searching in the HELIN Catalog.
• BUT different resources use different
  vocabularies.
• Our catalog and Academic Search Premier use the
  Library of Congress headings.
• PubMed, a medical database, uses controlled
  vocabulary and uncontrolled authors terms.

5
How do you find controlled vocabulary?

• Essentially, the two methods we used with the
  Library of Congress subject headings.
• Keyword search and examine likely records
• Look it up in the Thesaurus

6
Field Searching

• If you have more precise information, use the
  fields
• Author
• Title
• Publisher
• Journal / Source
• and so on
• Each search is a little different and requires
  different tools and techniques.

7
Stop Words
Many electronic resources filter out stop
words, words too common to search effectively.

• the
• of
• and
• be
• or

• Notice that some of these words are Boolean
  Operators!
• You cant search for and if its also supposed
  to mean AND!

8
Phrase Searching

• Many resources treat any search string without
  operators as an exact phrase.
• Others assume AND or OR between each word.
  Google assumes AND.
• To force a database or search engine to look for
  an exact phrase, put your search terms in quotes
  -- everything within the quotes gets searched
  exactly as you entered it.

9
Proximity Operators

• Boolean Operators are not the only ways you can
  link words in searches
• Each resource is a little different, so read the
  help files or experiment!

10
Near

• Usually
• N will find records with the selected words or
  phrases with no more than words between them.
• election N3 reform gets election reform and
  reform of the election system but not reform
  proposals included overhauling the election
  system

11
Within

• Usually
• W will find records with the selected words or
  phrases in the same order with no more than
  words between them.
• election W3 reform gets election reform but not
  reform of the election system or the election
  system badly needs the proposed reform.

12
Truncation and Wildcards

• These also vary from resource to resource! Read
  the help files to understand what each tool is
  doing.
• These tools let you insert undefined characters
  into words, broadening your search to include a
  lot of related words.

13
Truncation

• Lets you search for words with common roots,
  finding words that start with the same letters.
  In Academic Search Premier, its
• Wom gets
• women, woman, womens, womans
• womyn, womanhood, womanly, etc.
• wombat, wombats, wombats
• Be careful!

14
Wildcards

• Wildcards let you put an unspecified character in
  the middle of a word. In Academic Search
  Premier, its ?
• So, wom?n gets
• women, woman, womyn
• But not
• womanly, womanhood, or wombat

15
WARNING!

• These advanced techniques can be incredibly
  useful, broadening and narrowing your searches in
  very precise ways.
• However, misusing them can turn a search to junk,
  and each resource uses them somewhat differently,
  so they are easy to misuse.

16
More WARNING!

• Read the help files for your selected resource!
• Check how they handle stop words, proximity
  searching, and especially truncation and
  wildcards!

17
So why bother..?

• Because it makes your searching more precise.
• Precision searching makes your research go
  faster.
• Faster research means more time for actually
  writing the papers, proofreading, revision, and
  the business of living!