Information Services and Systems Effective Database Searching Bernie Mathias and Clare Boucher

Information Services and Systems Session Outline Devise a search strategy Boolean Operators Truncation and wildcards Limits Refining results

Information Services and Systems Devising a search strategy Clarify the different parts of your search - identify the main elements (topics) How would someone else describe your topic? Synonyms, alternative spellings Broader & narrower terms

Information Services and Systems Concept 1 Dyspraxia Clumsy/ clumsiness Development coordination disorder (DCD) Motor disordered Movement difficulty Apraxia Concept 2 Child/ren Boy/s Girl/s Infants Concept 3Concept 4 Support Help Therapy Intervention UK, Wales UK / United Kingdom GB / Great Britain Wales / Welsh England & Wales “ Support for children with dyspraxia in the UK, specifically Wales”

Information Services and Systems Boolean Searching - AND librarian* AND cake* Results will contain librarian/s AND cake/s librariancake

Information Services and Systems OR librarian* OR cake* Results will contain either librarian/s OR cake/s or some results will contain both search terms librarian cake

Information Services and Systems NOT librarian* NOT cake* Results will contain librarian/s but NOT cake/s librariancake

Information Services and Systems Truncation Asterisk to stand for any number of letters: terroris* finds terrorism, terrorist, terrorists etc. bird* finds bird, birds, birding etc. p*diatric searches for pediatric or paediatric Sometimes the ? or ! are used instead of the *

Information Services and Systems Wildcards Question mark often used to stand for a single character or none (can be useful for different spellings / word formations): wom?n finds woman, women colo?r finds color, colour civili?ation finds civilisation and civilization Sometimes the # or ! are used instead of the ?

Information Services and Systems Phrase searching Use quotation marks to search for a phrase. This allows you to search for the words appearing exactly as you input them e.g. “new labour” “pesticide residues” “mass media”

Information Services and Systems SAME and NEAR Animal SAME test* 2,288 results Animal NEAR/5 test*1,741 results Other databases may have Adj (adjacent to)

Information Services and Systems Search Order Databases, like WoS, interpret the search operators in a fixed order of priority (regardless of the order they appear in your search terms): ( ) SAME / NEAR NOT AND OR

Information Services and Systems Search Order cont’d You may need to use brackets to control the order in which your search terms are combined. The OR operations (in brackets) are performed before the AND operations. pesticides OR insecticides AND tomatoes results would include all references to pesticides whether they mentioned tomatoes or not (pesticides OR insecticides) AND tomatoes Searches for pesticides or insecticides first and then combines these results with tomatoes

Information Services and Systems Limits Date Language Document type

Information Services and Systems Summary Today we’ve looked at how to: Devise a search strategy. Use Boolean operators to combine keywords and create meaningful and effective database searches. Use features of the Web of Science database. Refine and limit searches to achieve more focussed results. Any queries after today please contact your subject librarian.