Search Strategy

Formulating a Search Strategy to be Used in Database Searching:

A Few Hints and Suggestions

Boolean Operators A database is nothing more than an index of words appearing in an article (text) or in fields of a bibliographic record (subject, author, title, abstract, etc.) In order to construct an effective search of these databases, the key terms of what you are looking for must be connected in such a way that the most relevant results are returned from your search. All of our databases use, in some form, what are known as Boolean Operators. These are the words And, Or, Not used in a way to either expand or narrow your search terms.

*And*	All of your terms must be included in your search. (employee turnover *AND* programmers) Use *And* to Narrow your search. sample: Brea and Fullerton and Placentia and housing
Or	This means that either term may included. Use Or to expand your search. sample: software engineers or programmers sample: Brea or Fullerton or Placentia or Orange County
*Not*	Excludes a word or phrase from your search sample: employee turnover *Not* Software Engineers sample: gangs not motorcycles

Use parentheses for a search that has more than one type of connector

Parentheses are used to separate your searches when using more than one type of connector,
sample: software and (employee turnover or employee retention)
sample: gangs not (motorcycle or bike)

Specialized Search Features by Publisher

Publisher and Databases

EbscoHOST
    Academic Search     Premier
     PyscINFO
     ERIC
     RILM
     Sports Discus

Wildcard is represented by a question mark ?
      example: ne?t will find all citations containing neat, nest or next
Truncation is represented by an asterisk
      example: comput* to find the words computer or computing
Singular Terms entered, automatically the default plural is searched also
      example: egg and eggs.
Irregular Plurals entered, plurals are not automatically searched
      It is necessary to enter in irregular plurals
      example: Child and Children, Wife or Wives
Phrase Searching phrases are enclosed by quotation marks to search exact phrase.
      example: "New York City"
      example "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
Stop words will not be search even if within quotations
       example: the, for, of, after, or, an
Proximity Searches:
       Near Operator (N) - N5 finds the words if they are within five words of one another regardless of the order
       Within Operator (W) - In the following example, W8 finds the words if they are within eight words of one another and in the order in which you entered them.

CSA
Sociological Abstracts

* Truncation. This expands a search term to include all forms of a root word,
example: patent* retrieves patent, patents, patentable, patented, etc.

* Multi-character wildcard for finding alternative spellings. Use to indicate an unlimited number of characters within a word,
example: behavi*r retrieves behaviour or behavior.

? Single-character wildcard for finding alternative spellings. The ? represents a single character; two ?? represent two characters; three ??? represent three characters, and so on. Use within or at the end of a word, example:wom?n finds woman as well as women,
carbon fib?? finds carbon fiber or carbon fibre.

Proximity Searching

Proximity searches limit the number of words between your search terms.

Use	To
No Operator	Find words as a phrase, e.g., life stage transitions retrieves records containing the three words immediately adjacent to one another and in the same order.
WITHIN "X"	Find words within a specified radius, e.g., carbon within 3 fiber retrieves records that contain carbon and fiber in any order and within a three word radius of one other. Any number may be used to determine the proximity radius.
NEAR	Find words within 10 words of each other, e.g., (women near violence) retrieves records that contain women and violence in any order and within a 10 word radius of one other. Note: near is the same as within 10.
BEFORE	Finds words in a relative order, e.g., social before security. Note: adjacency is not implied.
AFTER	Finds words that contain words in the relative order specified with the after expression, e.g., scope after science. Note: adjacency is not implied.

Proquest
Proquest Newspapers

* Multi-character wildcard for finding alternative spellings. Use to indicate an unlimited number of characters within a word,
Eample: behavi*r retrieves behaviour or behavior.

? Used to replace a single character, either inside the word or the right end of the word.
? cannot be used to begin a word.
example, "wom?n" will find "woman" and "women."
"t?re" will find "tire", "tyre", "tore", etc.

Operators Boolean, proximity and adjacency operators are used to broaden and narrow your search.

AND	Find all the words. When searching for keywords in "Citation and Document Text," AND finds documents in which the words occur in the same paragraph (within approx. 1000 characters) or the words appear in any citation field. Use W/DOC in place of AND when searching for keywords within "Citation and Document Text" or "Document Text" to retrieve more comprehensive results. Example: internet AND education
AND NOT	Find documents which have the first word, but not the second word. Example: Internet AND NOT html
OR	Find any of the words. Example: Internet OR intranet
W/#	Find documents where these words are within some number of words apart (either before or after). Use when searching for keywords within "Citation and Document Text" or "Document Text." Example: computer W/3 careers
W/PARA	Finds documents where these words are within the same paragraph (within approx. 1000 characters). Use when searching for keywords within "Document Text." Example: internet W/PARA education
W/DOC	Find documents where all the words appear within the document text. Use W/DOC in place of AND when searching for keywords within "Citation and Document Text" or "Document Text" to retrieve more comprehensive results. Example: Internet W/DOC education
NOT W/#	Find documents where these words appear but are not within some number of words apart (either before or after). Use when searching for keywords within "Citation and Document Text" or "Document Text." Example: computer NOT W/2 careers
PRE/#	Find documents where the first word appears some number of words before the second word. Use when searching for keywords within "Citation and Document Text" or "Document Text." Example: world pre/3 web

Stop Words ProQuest ignores the following frequently-used words. To use them as part of a search phrase, enclose them with quotation marks: e.g. "the sound and the fury".

about	can	just	out	those
after	could	like	said	through
also	do	make	should	to
an	each	many	so	use
and	for	more	some	was
any	from	most	such	we
are	had	much	than	were
as	has	no	that	what
at	have	not	the	when
be	how	now	their	which
because	if	of	them	while
been	into	only	there	who
between	is	or	these	will
both	it	other	they	with
but	its	our	this	would

Lexis/Nexis

Plurals

Using the singular word form will retrieve the singular, plural, and possessive forms of most words. For example, city would find city, cities, city's, and cities'

The system will not automatically find the plural form of words that end in "us" or "is", or other irregular plural forms. For example, bonus would not find bonuses and child would not find children. Use the OR connector in these instances.

Use an exclamation mark (!) to truncate a word to find all the words made by adding letters to the end of it. For example, acqui! would find variations on the term acquire such as acquires, acquired, acquiring, and acquisition.

Use an asterisk (*) as a "wildcard" to replace a character anywhere in a word, except the first character. Use one asterisk for each character you want to replace.

Examples:
wom*n would find woman and women
bernst**n would find bernstein and bernstien

The following are examples of date restrictions.

date = 2004	or	date is 2004
date > 31 December 2004	or	date aft 31 december 2004
date < 1/1/1997	or	date bef 01/01/2004

proper names: Mary OR M W/3 Jones

Search Connectors and Commands

AND	OR	W/n	ATLEAST
AND NOT	PRE/n	W/p	ALLCAPS
NOT W/n	NOT W/seg	W/seg	CAPS
NOT W/para	NOT W/sent	W/s	NOCAPS

Wilson
Omnifile Full text Mega
Social Sciences Full Text

When using the All - Smart Search query do not use truncation symbols or other special characters. The Wilson All - Smart Search query will automatically search those options.

it is possible to create a Bound Phrase by entering quotation marks (" ") around your search terms.

The truncation symbol (*) serves as a substitute for zero or a string of characters.
For example the search:
cat* retrieves catalyst, catatonic, as well as category
m*cdonald retrieves both mcdonald and macdonald.

The wildcard symbol (?) serves as a substitute for a single alphanumeric character. It is particularly useful when you are unsure of spelling.
For example, the search einst??n retrieves the correctly spelled einstein (albert einstein).
When searching for SIC codes, which are 4 digits, use the wildcard symbol (?) to search ranges.
For example, 12?? <in> sic retrieves all available codes between 1200 and 1300.

Stopwords Certain common words like are, for, and the, appear too frequently to be useful in searching text. However, you can still include a stopword in your search by using quotation marks.

Prepared by Cynthia Bruns. An administrative page of the Paulina June & George Pollak Library at California State University, Fullerton.
(c) 2007 California State University, Fullerton. All rights reserved.