The Research Process - Search Strategies

Subject Overview / Topic Selection / Outline / Finding Resources / Search Strategies / Evaluation / Copyright / Synthesis

Use the following search strategies to find resource material:

Browse Search

Casual inspection of information

Hypertext

Click highlighted links to reach related sites

Nesting

Use parentheses to clarify relationships between search terms
Ex: (pollution or trash) and pational parks

Hierarchical

Examine broad topics or headings

Analytical

Boolean searches (using and, or, not in a keyword search phrase)
Ex: national parks and environment

Truncation

Searching for all forms of a keyword by use of an asterisk

Ex: educat* for educate, educating, education, educational

Proximity

Using with, near, or adj (adjacent) in a keyword phrase

Ex: national with parks

Keyword

Using search terms found during the overview stage

Field

Using the parts of a citation to search, such as author, title, publisher, date

To access a more detailed discussion of these search strategies, visit:

http://www.lib.duke.edu/libguide/adv_searching.htm#Boolean

Tutorial Home | Library Home | Ask A Librarian