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Spark 001 (Gautreau)

Film and American Culture - Research Guide

Phrase Searching

 

" "

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

Examples:

“american film”

“science fiction”

“antibiotic resistant bacteria”

“star wars the force awakens”

Boolean Operators (AND/OR)

 

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:

#1
music AND "martial arts"

#2
fantasy OR supernatural

#3
film
AND
crime OR gangster
 

 

Truncation

 

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 adventur* to search for adventure, adventures, adventurers, adventurous etc.

Add the truncation symbol to the word cinema* to search for cinema, cinemas, cinematic etc.