Use quotation marks to search for an exact phrase.
Ex: "copyright laws" will search the two words together as one phrase rather than two separate words.
Use Boolean terms to increase accuracy of searches. Boolean terms are words such as AND, OR, and NOT.
- AND will narrow your search terms. "Rome" AND "leaders" would locate any results that had the words "Rome" and "leaders" together.
- OR will broaden search results by searching for either term. "Rome" OR "leaders" would locate results that had either the term "Rome" or the term "leaders," but not together.
- NOT will narrow your results by eliminating one of the search terms. Searching "Rome" NOT "leaders" would find results that had only the word "Rome" and did not include the word "leaders" at all.
When searching an online database such as EBSCO, try limiting your results by selecting Full Text or PDF Full Text in order to eliminate locating abstracts only. You can also enter publication date requirements, such as 2000 to 2010, to only find articles that have been published in the last ten years.
If searching for an item using an Online Public Access Catalog (or OPAC) such as AubieCat, rather than doing a quick search, which will locate any word in any part of the item, search by title or author, or do an Advanced Search for more options to narrow or expand your results.
