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Information Services and Systems
Effective Database Searching
Bernie Mathias and Clare Boucher
Information Services and Systems
Session Outline
• Devise a search strategy• Boolean Operators• Truncation and wildcards• Limits• Refining results
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Devising a search strategy
• Clarify the different parts of your search -identify the main elements (topics)
• How would someone else describe your topic?
• Synonyms, alternative spellings• Broader & narrower terms
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Concept 1
Dyspraxia
Clumsy/clumsiness
Development coordination disorder (DCD)
Motor disordered
Movement difficulty
Apraxia
Concept 2
Child/ren
Boy/s
Girl/s
Infants
Concept 3 Concept 4
Support
Help
Therapy
Intervention
UK, Wales
UK / UnitedKingdom
GB / GreatBritain
Wales / Welsh
England & Wales
“Support for children with dyspraxia in the UK, specifically Wales”
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Boolean Searching - AND
librarian* AND cake*
Results will contain librarian/s AND cake/s
librarian cake
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OR
librarian* OR cake*Results will contain either librarian/s OR cake/s or
some results will contain both search terms
librarian cake
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NOT
librarian* NOT cake*
Results will contain librarian/s but NOT cake/s
librariancake
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Truncation
Asterisk to stand for any number of letters:
terroris* finds terrorism, terrorist, terrorists etc.bird* finds bird, birds, birding etc.p*diatric searches for pediatric or paediatric
Sometimes the ? or ! are used instead of the *
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Wildcards
Question mark often used to stand for a single character or none (can be useful for different spellings / word formations):
wom?n finds woman, womencolo?r finds color, colourcivili?ation finds civilisation and civilization
Sometimes the # or ! are used instead of the ?
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Phrase searching
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase. This allows you to search for the words appearing exactly as you input them e.g.
• “new labour”• “pesticide residues”• “mass media”
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SAME and NEAR
• Animal SAME test* 2,288 results• Animal NEAR/5 test* 1,741 results
Other databases may have • Adj (adjacent to)
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Search Order Databases, like WoS, interpret the search operators
in a fixed order of priority (regardless of the order they appear in your search terms):
• ( )• SAME / NEAR• NOT• AND• OR
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Search Order cont’d
You may need to use brackets to control the order in which your search terms are combined.
The OR operations (in brackets) are performed before the AND operations.
pesticides OR insecticides AND tomatoes
results would include all references to pesticides whether they mentioned tomatoes or not
(pesticides OR insecticides) AND tomatoes
Searches for pesticides or insecticides first and then combines these results with tomatoes
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Limits
• Date
• Language
• Document type
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SummaryToday we’ve looked at how to:
• Devise a search strategy.• Use Boolean operators to combine keywords and
create meaningful and effective database searches.• Use features of the Web of Science database.• Refine and limit searches to achieve more focussed
results.
Any queries after today please contact your subject librarian.
