Search Techniques (PetrSU)

There are common search techniques that you can apply to almost any database, including article databases, online catalogues and popular search engines like Google.
The techniques described in this guide will help you find relevant results when using library catalogue, databases or other online resources.
If you search library resources and do not get the results you expect, contact library staff for advice.

Identify your keywords in your assignment or related to your topic.

Before you start searching for information, spend time analysing the question to identify subject words and instruction words.
Subject words or keywords are the main ideas or concepts in your topic you will use when searching library catalogue or specific databases. 

Action words tell you how to answer the question and what your essay should do. It is important that you understand exactly what these words mean so that you don’t misinterpret a question.
Examples of terms describing actions you may be asked to undertake in your assessment tasks: analyse, compare, comment, define, describe, discuss, evaluate, explain etc.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs by Fractus Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Try to include synonyms in your search. Databases only bring back results which contain the exact words you typed in, so if you include alternative keywords you may find a lot more of relevant material.
 For example, if you are researching a social services related topic take a moment to write down as many synonyms as you can think of – such as community service, social welfare, support services, social care/work etc.

• Use an encyclopaedia or dictionary to find definitions (e.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica online, Cambridge online dictionary, print dictionaries and encyclopaedias in the reference section of the library)
• Use a thesaurus to find related or similar terms.
• Use acronyms and full names (for example: CSO and Central Statistics Office)
• Don’t forget to search for people, places and organisations related to your topic.

Video courtesy of University of Houston Libraries.  

Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks “ “. Words enclosed in double quotes will appear together in all results exactly as typed E.g. “social learning theory”

• Truncation is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings. For example, comput* will match all words that begin with compu” (e.g., computer, computation, etc.) Truncation symbols may vary by database; common symbols include: *,!,?, or #
• Identify words from different cultures e.g. rubbish/garbage/trash or variant spelling: catalog/catalogue
• Use a wildcard “?”  to substitute a symbol for one letter of a word. This is useful if a word is spelled in different ways, but still has the same meaning e.g. colo?r to search for color and colour, wom?n  to search for woman and women.

Use advanced search screen to be more specific in your search.
Multiple search terms in multiple fields can be searched for simultaneously. The advanced search should be used when the collection of interested articles is large and needs to be narrowed.
It is also useful when information from more than one field would help in locating items of interest, such as when looking for an author with a common name, which can be narrowed by combining name with subject.

There are refinement options in most databases which allow you to refine your search by types of content, specific subject terms and publication dates and more.

For example, you may see a panel on called Refine Results:

Or Tweak my results as it can be seen below:

Or like in this example of the library online catalog, there is a panel called Refine your search:

There are many shortcuts you can use with Google to get more focused results:

• site: (search only one website) before your search terms (for example: site:ie )
• filetype: (restrict search to specific filetype) for example use filetype:ppt to find PowerPoint presentations,
• filetype:pdf – pdf documents,
• filetype:docx – Microsoft Word documents