Search Tips
There are two main tips to make your searches better. Combining your search terms with AND, OR, and NOT can customize your search so that you spend much less time sorting through your results, while truncation is a search tool that allows you to search for all the different variations of a word at once. Read the boxes underneath this for explanations as to how these two search tips work. The picture below is an example of a search using these tips.
Truncation
When researching for a topic that has many different word variations, you can use truncation to search for all of the different word variations at one time. For example, you might be looking for information on addiction, but realize that it could be useful to look at information on addicts, or addicting substances. In this case, it would be helpful to truncate by finding the root of your word and adding an asterisk to the end.
Finding the root is as simple as looking at the spelling of the different word variations you want to combine--the only difference between addiction, addicts, and addicting substances is the suffixes. "Addict" stays the same throughout each variation. You can type addict* into the database and it will give you results for every single word that starts with "addict". This will greatly increase your search results and help you cut down on the number of searches you do.
Combining Search Terms with Boolean Operators
Every time you search in a library database, you might notice that difference search boxes are connected by little drop down menus that have options for AND, OR, or NOT. These options are called Boolean Operators, and they are specific commands to the database to combine your search terms in certain ways.
