Using these search techniques will help you effectively and efficiently retrieve relevant information from library databases. These techniques can be applied to almost any database or search engine.

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators connect your search terms together to either narrow or broaden your set of results. The three basic operators are AND, OR, and NOT.

boolean operators venn diagram

Use AND in a search to:

narrow your results
tell the database that all search terms must be present in the results

Example: cloning AND ethics AND humans will only capture results that mention all of these terms.

Use OR in a search to:

connect two or more similar concepts
broaden your results
tell you the database that any of the search terms can be present in the results

Example: cloning OR genetics OR reproduction will capture results that mention any of these terms.

Use NOT in a search to:

exclude words from your search
narrow your search
tell the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms

Example: cloning NOT sheep will capture all results that mention cloning minus any results that mention sheep.

Truncation, Wildcards & Phrases

Truncation

diagram illustrating truncation of child*

Truncation is a technique that broadens searches to include various word endings and spellings. To use truncation in a search, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end. The database will return results that include any ending of that root word. For this reason, it is best not to use truncation on keyword that has a very common root (e.g. gen* for genes will also lead to general, gentle, and generation; cat* will find cat and cats but also catapult, catastrophe, catalyst and catalog), or that is very likely yield irrelevant variations (e.g. anim* = animal, animated, anima, animosity, anime).

Examples:

child* = child, child's, children, children's, childhood, childbirth, childcare, childless, childproof

gam* = game, games, gamers, gamification, gamete, gambling, gamma

Wildcards

Wildcards substitute a symbol for one letter or word. This is useful if a word is spelled in different ways, but still has the same meaning.

Example 1: wom!n = woman, women

Example 2: colo?r = color, colour

Preferred truncation and wildcard symbols vary by database, but common symbols include *, !, ?, #. For assistance identifying a resource's preferred truncation symbol, look for the resource's "Help" documentation, or contact a librarian using UW Libraries' AskUs chat service.

Phrases

Phrase searching allows you to specify that adjacent words be searched together instead of as single words. To do this, use parentheses or quotes around search words.

Example: "genetic engineering" will return only results that contain this exact and entire phrase.