The OU Library's Safari tutorial provides a worked example of a database search that allows you to use a live database to practise many of the search techniques outlined in this section.
Using the right keywords
To create a precise and thorough search for information you will need to spend some time gathering together relevant search terms. Synonyms and related terms and phrases can be gathered from several sources. Try:
- Printed dictionaries and thesauri – either general or subject specific.
- Online dictionaries and thesauri e.g. Thesaurus.com.
- Keywords and descriptors used in key journal articles.
- Thesauri, subject headings, phrase lists or other lists of controlled vocabulary in individual databases.
- Selecting a relevant database or search engine and do a very quick search on your topic. Skim through the results and any full text that may be available to identify new keywords/synonyms/related terms for your searches. Also look at the keywords and subject headings that have been assigned to your results by the indexers of the database.
Example search: Transferable skills of research students
Keywords:
Transferable, moveable, assignable
ability, training, masters
BPhil, MPhil, EdD, PhD, doctorate, postgraduate
Phrase searching
Useful for refining and increasing the relevance of a search, phrase searching offers the ability to look for words together in a phrase. Supported by most databases the most common indicator of a phrase is speech marks.
Example search: Transferable skills of research students
"transferable skills" "research students"
This search would retrieve material on the 'transferable skills of research students' and not 'transferable and research skills for sixth-form students'. The latter would be retrieved using a search for the words transferable, skills, research, students.
Boolean logic
Useful when searching for concepts linked in a certain way. Requires the use of the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT.
Descriptions of the principles of Boolean searching can be found on the following two websites:
Boolean search logic (University of Surrey)
Example search: Transferable skills of research students
"transferable skills" AND "research students"
This narrows a search on the transferable skills of research students by ensuring material retrieved covers both aspects of the study area. Without this Boolean linking, the search would produce results containing information on research students but nothing on transferable skills. Also the search would produce results containing information on transferable skills but nothing on research students.
"transferable skills" NOT "information literacy"
This would narrow a search on transferable skills alone by excluding any material that mentioned information literacy.
"transferable skills" OR "ability"
This would broaden a search on transferable skills by including material that included the word ability.
Nested searches
Nested searches are used to create more complex Boolean logic statements. For example:
{pets NOT (cats OR dogs)} AND behaviour
This statement would be used to search for material on the behaviour of all pets except cats and dogs.
This type of searching is supported in many resources, often with the use of brackets or separate search boxes. For example:
Example search: Transferable skills of research students
{"transferable skills" NOT ("study skills" OR "presentation skills")} and "research students"
This statement would be used to search for material on the transferable skills of research students excluding material that mentioned study skills or presentation skills.
Proximity
Some databases allow searching for words in the same sentence or within three or four words of one another. This increases the relevance of results by ensuring that when searching for separate but connected concepts, the concepts are connected in the right context. Using our example of Transferable skills of research students proximity ensures that an article on the transferable skills of librarians written by research students (and so not about research students) would not be retrieved. Proximity is particularly useful when searching full text databases.
"transferable skills" SAME "research students"
"transferable skills" in the same sentence as "research students"
"transferable skills" w3 "research students"
"transferable skills" within 3 words of "research students"
"transferable skills" NEAR "research students"
"transferable skills" within the databases definition of ‘NEAR’ to "research students"
Truncation
This is useful when searching for the singular and plural form of a word as well as for terms that can be reduced to a common stem. Often the asterisk (*) is used but other characters can also be inserted, including the exclamation mark (!).
A search for
skill*
would retrieve skill, skills, skilling, skilled, etc.
Wildcard
You may be able to replace none, one or more letters within a word by using a character, often a question mark (?) or an asterisk (*).
A search for
Transfer?able
would retrieve transferable and transferrable
Saved searches
In many databases you can save a search to run at a later date. This is particularly useful if your search statement is complex and lengthy to enter.
Common pitfalls
- Be aware of variations in British and American spelling.
- Make sure you don't restrict yourself to items held in online databases. Some online databases go back as far as the 1980's, but others do not even go that far. There may be important publications that were published before that, and you will need to search elsewhere for these.
- Authors' first names and initials are often indexed inconsistently in databases.
- Some journal issues are also published as books.
- Be aware that not all important research is published in English.
- Foreign languages may be transliterated in different ways, such as the German ü, which can be replaced with u or ue.
- Some foreign journals have translations published much later and with different dates and page numbers