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How to Search Catalogs & Databases

Below are several tips for successful searching in library catalogs and databases. For more details, consult the Help screens provided by each database.

Keyword Searching

Use keyword searching as a starting point in any database or catalog. Keyword searching allows you to type in a topic in your own language. Keyword searching is also called "Word" or "Any Word."

• The FLO Catalog requires that keyword phrases be typed in "quotation marks":

  "eating disorders"
  "autistic children" and diagnosis

• Most databases do not require quotation marks.

Subject Searching

Subject searches require that you know "controlled vocabulary," the exact subject headings used by the particular database. In library catalogs, these are the Library of Congress Subject Headings. In other databases, they are the descriptors or index terms specific to that database. Help screens or online thesauri will help identify correct subject headings.

Stop Words

Stops words are little words that are not recognized by many databases. Avoid using these in your search.

• leading articles (the, a, an, l', una)
• prepositions (at, by, in, from, of, to, with)
• pronouns (she, we, he, they, it, you)

Boolean Searching

Boolean searching allows you to join concepts for more efficient searching. Use Boolean Operators to connect your terms:

• AND to limit your search to items that have both terms, e.g. musical AND instruments
• OR to expand your search to include items that have either term, e.g. college OR university
• NOT to exclude items that have the second term, e.g. chocolate NOT ice cream

Truncation

Use the Truncation symbol to search for words with a common root and different endings, for example: adolescen* will retrieve adolescent, adolescents, adolescence. Different databases use different truncation symbols, including *, ? and $. This is a great trick that saves lots of searching time when used skillfully.

• FLO Catalog: ? as in adolescen?
• Journals @ OVID: $ as in adolescen$
• Most other databases: * as in adolescen*

Thesaurus

Explore the thesaurus to get a list of the database's "Controlled Vocabulary." These are the terms that the database creators have assigned as subject headings or descriptors to describe the main ideas in books and articles. If you are not successful using your own terminology, try consulting the thesaurus for different words with similar meanings.