Writing 100 (Spring 2025, Pravin)

Search Strategies

You can use the search strategies below to tell the database more about what you are looking for. These strategies work in most databases and will help you make sure the database is finding the materials that you need.

Quotation Marks

" "

To search for specific phrases, enclose them in quotation marks. The database will search for those words together in that order.

Examples:

• “artificial intelligence”
• “robot assisted surgery”
• “public health”
• “copyright infringement”

Boolean Operators

AND, OR

Join together search terms in a logical manner.

AND - narrows searches, used to join dissimilar terms
OR - broadens searches, used to join similar terms

Examples:

• copyright AND "artificial intelligence"
• "artificial intelligence" OR AI
• art AND "artificial intelligence" OR AI OR robot* AND copyright

Truncation

*

Truncate a word in order to search for different forms of the same word. Many database use the asterisk * as the truncation symbol.

Example:

• Truncate the word education robot* to search for robot, robots, robotics, robotic etc.
• Add the truncation symbol to the word educat* to search for educate, educates, education, educational, educator, educators etc.