In this section, you'll find:Watch this quick video and click on each heading below to learn more about some useful search strategies. As you search, try a few of these strategies at the same time! These strategies can help you create complex, specific searches and gather focused information on your topic.
Video posted on YouTube by Virginia Tech Libraries under a Creative Commons license.
To search for a phrase in which word order matters, put quotation marks (" ") around your search terms.
Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT can help you combine and exclude terms from your searches. They're used directly in a database's search bar, between your keywords.
Some databases will have multiple search boxes so that you can split up your search terms and select a Boolean operator from a drop-down menu to combine the terms.
Remember Venn Diagrams? They're a great way to visualize what the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT can do for your research.
You can combine phrase searching and more than one Boolean operator to make complex, specific searches.
Placing parentheses () around your search terms is a way to group concepts and tell the database exactly what order to use when processing your search. It's just like the idea of order of operations in mathematics.
As you browse the catalog or a database and find a resource that looks promising, look for hyperlinked subjects, also called subject headings. These subject headings can be found in the detailed record for an article--what you get to when you click on a title from your search results list.
This strategy involves tracking down the sources that an article (or any piece of information) cites, or following a citation chain. This strategy is a great example of why it's important to cite your sources - citations help your readers find information that is similar or crucial to your own arguments. When you find an article or source that is relevant to your research, take a look at the sources they're citing!
Not all of our library subscription databases include the full text of every article they contain. In those cases, you can request articles from other libraries through a process called interlibrary loan. This video walks through that process!
Sometimes you'll come across a great article while searching outside of library resources. This video shows you how to check if we have access to what you find through Google or other non-library search tools.