| UNIT DESCRIPTION |
| SELECTING YOUR SOURCES |
| WHAT ARE DATABASES? |
| ADVANCED KEYWORD SEARCHING |
| REFINING YOUR KEYWORD SEARCH |
| NATURAL LANGUAGE SEARCHING |
| SEARCH LIMITS |
| EVALUATING YOUR SOURCES |
| REFERENCE LIST |
ADVANCED KEYWORD SEARCHING
- Developing Keywords
- Phrase Searching
- Truncation
- Wildcards
- Boolean Operators
- Nesting
- Proximity Operators
- Review Quiz
Developing Keywords
The first step in a keyword search is identifying appropriate keywords for your topic. This begins with an examination of your topic. Let's assume that you want to research the effect of British colonialism on relations between Hinduism and Islam in India. Ask yourself:
Some keywords are pretty simple. In this case, some obvious keywords would be Hinduism, Islam, India, British, and colonialism. It is usually better to have more than one keyword or one key phrase, especially when your keyword is a somewhat general term like Hinduism or British. Next: Are there any distinct terms or phrases that describe my topic?
Think of synonyms, variations and related concepts for your keywords
For instance, as well as Islam you could also use Muslim and as well as colonialism you might also use imperialism. Here, it can be useful to brainstorm for more terms with the same or similar meanings as your current keywords.
Other examples:
- Veiling - veil, hijab, scarf, scarves, head coverings, modesty
- Women - female, females, gender, woman
- Islam - Muslim, middle east, islamic
Phrase Search
There are times when the best keyword would actually be a phrase. In this case, you can usually differentiate a phrase by keeping it in quotation marks. For instance, if you want to focus on current relations between Islam and Hinduism, you will know that relation is too general a word to help with a keyword search. However, interreligious dialogue is a specific concept that may apply to your topic.
N.B. Most databases default to phrase searching, however this may not be true of all databases.
Other examples:
- "Tibetan Buddhism"
- "sacred texts"
Truncation
If you have a keyword that has many variations, you can use truncation to gather them all in one search. To truncate, you must find the common part of the word and follow it with a symbol for truncation. Most systems use an asterisk (*) to indicate truncation but the University of Calgary Library Catalogue uses a dollar sign ($). For example, if you wanted records about Britain and the British, the correct truncation would be Brit* (or Brit$ in the U of C Catalogue). For Islam and Islamic, the correct truncation would be Islam*.
However, truncation will sometimes capture too many words. For example, not only does Hindu* return all records with Hindu, Hindus, and Hinduism, it also returns every record published by the Hindustan Publishing Corporation. This is impossible to completely avoid but can be limited by truncating your words as little as necessary. For instance, if you truncate down to Hind* in order to include Hindi and Hinduism in your search, you will also include any source by authors such as Colin Hindmarch and Judy Hindley, titles such as Does Entry Regulation Hinder Job Creation and Spectroelectrochemistry of Some Sterically-hindered Metalloporphyrins, and any books listed under the subject headings of Hindenberg or hindlimb. This problem will be minimized when searching with more than one search term or choosing only one search field (see field searching).
Other examples:
- Buddh* - will capture Buddhism, Buddha, Buddhist, Buddhists, and Buddhahood
- Buddhi* - will capture Buddhism, Buddhist, and Buddhists
- Buddhist* - will capture Buddhist and Buddhists
- Method* - will capture method, methods, methodology
Wildcards
Wildcards are similar to truncation except that they allow variation in the middle of a word. A wildcard is a symbol that allows one or more letters to vary (depending on the system). One of the most common examples is wom?n which captures all records that have the word woman or women. This function is also useful for when you are unsure of the spelling of a word, especially an author’s name. If you can not remember if an author's name was "Steven Jones" or "Steven Jonas" then entering Steven Jon?s will capture both options. Databases differ however and the symbol used for a wildcard and up to how many letters that wildcard represents varies. In the University of Calgary Library Catalogue, the wildcard is ‘?’ and represents one letter or none at all. For example, Jo?nson will capture Johnson and Jonson.
Other examples:
- Colo?r - will capture color and colour
Boolean Operators
Once you have defined keywords and understand truncation and wildcards, you can learn to control how to best create search statements. Boolean operators are words that indicate how you want your search terms to relate to each other. They are used to broaden or narrow a search by combining keywords using AND, OR, and NOT.
| AND | Keywords joined by AND will retrieve records that include ALL the keywords.
e.g. Women AND religion AND politics will retrieve: Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala and The Heritage of Islam: Women, Religion, and Politics in West Africa but it will not retrieve Journal of Women and Religion or Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion. |
Use AND when you only want sources that include both keywords somewhere N.B. Using AND in the Library Catalogue with Search Words or Phrase will retrieve records where the terms appear in separate fields. e.g. future illusion AND Freud would retrieve Freud's book. |
Don't use AND when you want records that contain either keyword but not necessarily both. e.g. If you want to look at the British impact in India, you don't want to enter Colonialization AND Imperialism as you will miss any record that only uses one keyword or the other. |
| OR | Keywords joined by OR will retrieve any record that has ANY of the terms. e.g. wom?n OR female will retrieve: The Religious Imagination of American Women and Some Wild Visions: Autobiographies by Itinerant Female Preachers in 19th Century America |
Use OR when you want to capture all possible ways of referring to one idea or when you are looking at multiple ideas that do not have to be related. | Do not use OR when you only want sources that deal with the relationship between certain keywords. e.g. If you want to know colonialization’s impact on the relationship between Islam and Hinduism don't use Colonialism OR Islam OR Hinduism as you will retrieve many records that only deal with one or the other. |
| NOT | Keywords joined by NOT will exclude the keyword following NOT e.g. Buddhism NOT China will retrieve Buddhism and Science but not The Renewal of Buddhism in China |
Use NOT when you have already done a search using a particular keyword and want to find records you may have missed. e.g. You searched British already and now want to search Britain. Entering Britain NOT British will return all records with the term Britain but not the term British, thereby excluding any records you already found. Also use NOT when you find a term that keeps coming up which you don't want in your results. e.g. If you enter British and keep getting records on British Columbia try entering British NOT Columbia |
Do not use NOT when the term you are trying to exclude is too closely related to the one you are trying to find, you will end up excluding too many pertinent records. |
Nesting
Nesting allows you to be more specific about the relations between your keywords. For instance, if you wanted to search for sources on Hindu-Muslim relations, knowing records may be under the keywords Muslim or Islam, you could enter your search as Hinduism AND (Islam OR Muslim). This indicates that as concepts, Islam and Muslim are interchangeable, and that the word Hinduism must be present along with either Islam or Muslim for the record to be retrieved.
Other Examples:
- (veil$ OR head covering) AND (Islam$ OR Muslim$)
Proximity Operators
Proximity operators are similar to Boolean operators in that they allow you to control how your keywords relate. Proximity operators allow you to make sure your keywords are close to each other. This type of search is most useful in databases in which you are doing a full-text search. A full-text search is one where documents or records are searched in their entirety rather than just the bibliographic record (author, title, subject headings etc.) that is typically searched through an index.
The most common proximity operators are WITH, NEAR, and ADJ (adjacent). However, they make your search terms interact differently depending on which database you are using them in. Look for advanced search options to see how proximity operators will function in the database you are using.
For more information on keyword searching see William Badke's, Research Strategies, Section 2 "Databases".
TIP - Always read instructions for a database. Each database has its own set of search rules. Some support Boolean searching, some do not and all have their own Boolean default. Not knowing the Boolean default or using search techniques that are not supported will lead to confusion as to what sources are available.
Review Quiz
If you wanted to find sources on Darwin's evolutionary theory in the library catalogue, what search query would be the most useful?
- Darwin's evolutionary theory
- Darwin$ and evolution$
- Darwin$ OR (evolution$ AND creation$)
- Darwin* AND (evolution* OR creation*)
Click here to take the quiz.
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