Searching Techniques

[Boolean Searching] [Natural Language Searching] [The Wildcard and Truncation] [Searching by Proximity]

Boolean Searching

Boolean Logic defines logical relationships between terms in a search. Boolean operators allow you to create a very broad or a very narrow search. The Boolean search operators are AND, OR and NOT. The results of a Boolean search are displayed in reverse chronological order with the most recent article presented first. To perform a Boolean search, select the Boolean search option (if available) on the Search Screen.

• Using the “AND” Search Operator - If you have a search term that is too general, you can append several terms together using “AND”. By stringing key terms together, you can further define your search and reduce the number of results.
  For example: travel and Europe will find articles that contain both “travel” and “Europe”.
• Using the “OR” Search Operator - In order to broaden a search, use the “OR” operator. When this operator is used, your terms are searched simultaneously and independently of each other.
  For example: college or university will find results that contain either “college” or “university”.
• Using the “NOT” Search Operator - To more clearly define a search, use the “NOT” operator. This operator will help you to filter out specific terms you do not wish to be included as part of your search.
  For example: television not cable will find results that contain the term “television” but not the term
  “cable”.

Natural Language Searching

Natural Language Searching allows you to search the database(s) using words or phrases. The results of a Natural Language search are displayed in ranked order with the most relevant article presented first. A result can be found even if the record does not contain all of the words from your search. The more words that appear in a record, the more relevant the record is and the closer to the top of the Result List it will appear.

For example: rising tuition costs in the United States will find articles that contain the words “rising”, “tuition”, “costs”, “United” and “States” (prepositions such as “in” and articles such as “the” are excluded from the search).

The Wildcard (?) and Truncation (*)

Use the Wildcard and Truncation symbols to create searches where there are unknown characters, multiple spellings or various endings. Please note: the Boolean search option must be selected to use either of these searching techniques.

• Wildcard - The wildcard is represented by a question mark (?). Enter the desired search terms and replace each unknown character with a “?”. EBSCOhost will find all citations of that word with the “?” replaced by a letter. For example: ne?t will find all citations containing “neat”, “nest” or “next”. EBSCOhost will not find “net” because the wildcard replaces a single character.
• Truncation - Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*). Enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an “*”. EBSCOhost will find all forms of that word. For example: comput* will find the words “computer”, “computerize”, or “computing”.

Searching by Proximity

A proximity search is a way of searching for two or more words that appear a specified number of words apart in the database. The proximity operators are composed of a letter (N or W) and a number (to specify the number of words apart). The proximity operator is placed between the words which are to be searched in proximity, as follows:

• Near Operator (N) In the following example, "N5" will find the words if they are within 5 words of one another regardless of the order in which they appear.For example, type tax N5 reform to find results that would match " tax reform" as well as "reform of income tax".
• Within Operator (W) In the following example, "W8" will find the words if they are within 8 words of each other and in the order in which you entered them. For example, type tax W8 reform to find results that would match "tax reform" but would not match "reform of income tax".