A. Controlled Vocabulary
Use the Thesaurus to determine how the search terms are defined in the database. Each database is different, and terminology will vary. This is also called "controlled vocabulary" because the terms describe a concept so that all items on the topic have the same descriptor or subject heading. Subject, Index, Descriptor are other words used instead of thesaurus and they usually appear in the top toolbar of a database. Using this tool can help discover other synonyms and related terms to search on your topic. This can help you find relevant articles quickly and save you a lot of time!
B. Truncation (shorten a word and use of a symbol such as an asterisk (*) or question mark (?)) to search for multiple endings of root words.
Example: innovat* would search for innovate, innovates, innovation, innovations, innovative
C. BOOLEAN Connectors: AND, OR, NOT are connecting operators that tells the computer to expand (OR), limit (AND), eliminate (NOT) concepts when searching.
Example: medicine and malpractice
healthcare or medical
(healthcare or medical) and malpractice
[in Advanced Search Screen: place medicine in top box, use pull down menu to select AND before second box and type the word, malpractice]
D. Phrase search involves a concept that has more than one word and quotation marks around the terms defines the term.
Example: "health care reform"
Suggested specialized medical and science databases:
Suggested databases for Social Issues:
"...offers in-depth, non-biased coverage of today's most important issues."
Points of View Reference Center
"...designed to provide students with a series of essays that present multiple sides of a current issue."
Some databases that have popular, non-scholarly magazine and newspaper articles:
This a very large, interdisciplinary database that includes scholarly articles and indexes to journals.OmniFile Full Text Mega
"...provides invaluable support for research in all core undergraduate subjects and for cross-disciplinary work."
