Database Search Strategies
Use these strategies to make your database searches more efficient.
- Always click the Full Text limiter.
- Click the Peer Reviewed limiter if your assignment requires scholarly peer-reviewed sources.
- Use the Date Range limiter to limit your results to a specific date range.
- Search with specific keywords, not questions or sentences.
- Search 2-3 keywords at a time.
- Put phrases in quotes to search it as a complete phrase instead of individual words (such as “climate change”)
- Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT
- Use AND to search two unrelated terms. Example: climate change AND extreme weather
- Use OR to search two similar terms. Example: climate change OR global warming
- Use NOT to exclude results from your search. Example: climate change NOT air pollution
