Need Help?
Search Strategies
The first step is to determine keywords that sum up the main concepts of your topic. Keywords are typically nouns or noun phrases. If you phrase your topic as a research question or thesis, you can often pull keywords from the topic sentence.
Example topic: How can Santa Fe College students help restore the Perdido Key beach mouse population?
Keywords: Santa Fe College, students, Perdido Key beach mouse
Sometimes the keywords from your original topic sentence will not produce the types of results you want. When that happens, try to think of related keywords. These can be other words that have similar meanings, words that are broader (good for when you have too few results), or words that are more specific (good for when you have too many results).
Example related keywords:
Similar: Perdido Key beach mouse, Peromyscus polionotus trissyllepsis
Broader: college students, endangered species, conservation, mice
Narrower: Santa Fe College students, Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo
Truncation (shortening your keyword) makes the database look at other possible forms of a word for which you are searching. Use truncation to find plurals and variations on the endings of a word. To truncate, use the asterisk symbol: *. You can enter this symbol by pressing Shift and 8 on the keyboard at the same time or by pressing the asterisk symbol on the number pad.
Examples:
- You want to find the following terms:
habitat, habitats
Use habitat* - You want to find the following terms:
zoo, zoos, zoology
Use zoo* - You want to find the following terms:
ecology, ecological
Use ecolog*
To find an exact phrase (i.e., words in a row in an exact order), enclose the phrase in quotation marks.
Examples:
- "Perdido Key beach mouse"
- "Santa Fe College"
- "endangered species"
Combine keywords by putting the word AND between them. This requires that both keywords be present in the database's search results. Entries that include keywords connected by AND are referred to as search statements.
Example Search Statements using AND:
- "perdido key beach mouse" AND conservation
- "perdido key" AND mice AND habitat*
- "santa fe college" AND "perdido key beach mouse"
Note: If you use the Advanced Search feature of a database, AND is the default connector between the entry boxes.
