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Library & Academic IT

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Academic IT

ENGL 1012: Radical Writing and Ideas ✍️

Advanced Search Tips

Boolean Operators, Phrase Searching, and Truncation

Huh? 

No worries about what these things are called, but these tricks can be helpful when searching OneSearch, Library Databases, and even Google!

 

Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT)

Peanut butter AND jelly= Searches for both concepts

Peanut butter OR jelly= searches for peanut butter OR jelly- only one of the 2 needs to be present in the results

Peanut butter NOT jelly= Excludes jelly- like if you are really exclusively trying to get to peanut butter, but get irrelevant results about the sandwich.

 

Phrase Searching

"Peanut butter" = Searches for these two words together. In the above example (without the "") the system might give you results like:

Peanut agriculture vs the butter industry

"" is helpful when there's a concept that is 2 or more words.

 

Truncation

"peanut butter sandwich*"

This will include any letters that might come after sandwich like sandwiches

Another example: liter* (literacy,  literature, literate, etc.)

 

Keywords

Library search sites don't do well with full sentences or questions, so it's important to break your topic down into concepts and keywords. 

Below are a few examples of advanced searches.

Notice how they are broken down into 2-3 concepts using just the essential keywords:

 

"social media" OR instagram OR "tik tok"
"personal histor*" OR memoir OR *biograph*

"shared histor*" OR "people's history" OR "collective memory"
art OR storytelling OR dance 
Black OR "African American"
memoir OR autobiograph* OR narrative
ethic*

Other Tips

Tip 1: Read the assignment instructions carefully

Following the instructions not only helps you complete the assignment in line with your professor's expectations, but it can also save you from doing too much! 

If a rubric or examples are provided, scour those as well! These are maps to how to present your assignment. 

 

Tip 2: 

If you are choosing a topic, is it too broad or too narrow?

An example of too broad: A paper on shared memory. 

This is more of a topic for a whole book- or several books! 

An example of too narrow: How is shared memory demonstrated within the Brooklyn College anime club?

Though this is interesting, and could possible be done, it isn't a practical topic for a semester long course research assignment as there is likely very little previous research done on this very specific topic for you to draw on.