Most of us are familiar with searching in web engines like Google. Surely, you have your own tricks and strategies. In the slide show below, we'll introduce a few strategies that might be helpful.
Many library databases have advanced search screens like this:
| Boolean Operator | Example | What it does |
| AND | Halo AND language ideology | Narrows your search |
| OR | teens OR adolescents OR "young adults" | Broadens your search |
| NOT | "music education" NOT "music teachers" | Weeds out unhelpful stuff |
| "" (Quotation marks) | "multiple personality disorder" | Searches an exact phrase, those words in that order |
| * (Asterisk) |
communic* (will include possibilities like communication, communicators, communicating, etc) |
Includes all possible word ending variations |
Taking the time to break your research interest apart will help you to construct powerful search strings. Complete this form to produce a downloadable worksheet. The worksheet will help guide your search strategy. Scroll down and use blue next buttons to complete the form.
If you prefer, you may make copies of the Google documents linked below.