Searching for information sources in databases can be a complex and difficult process, but knowing how to search precisely can make it simpler. Databases are collections of digital files and metadata that are searchable. Some database search engines, like Google (Google is not a database, but uses similar features in its' search engine) have sophisticated search functions that can return relevant results with almost any form of search statement (i.e., the combination of words and symbols you enter in the search field). However, different types of databases have different levels of sophistication in how they search. For this reason, it is important to learn more technical, precise ways of searching. This includes keyword searching and Boolean logic and operators.
Library Databases are extremely literal. They are fast, but not smart. They will search exactly what you enter, no more or less. Rather than the natural language we are used to, where you would put your research question directly into the Google search bar, library databases use keywords and logic to search database content.
Keywords are essentially the main points of your topic or research question (like the three elements of population, variable, and effect). Once you have a simple but good question, you can easily pull your starting keywords from it.
Question: How can dogs improve the mental health of college students?
Main Points: How might dogs (the variable) influence the mental health (the effect) of college students (the population)?
Keywords: dogs AND "mental health" AND "college students"
It is best to put quotes around multiple words to keep them together, so that the database knows they are one key phrase instead of two separate keywords that mean something different when they are searched separately (mental and health are not the same things as "mental health" as a united concept. Likewise, searching animal AND rights might bring up anything that mentions animal and mentions rights, but searching "animal rights" links them together as a single multi-word phrase.
Boolean is a simple logic (think math with words) that tells the databases how to search the keywords using a series of operators, the most common being AND, OR, and NOT.
AND is the most used of the operators, and basically tells the database that all the results have to contain both keywords.
Dogs AND "Mental Health"
AND will always narrow your search and give you less results.
OR is used if there are multiple ways to say the same thing, such as synonyms.
(Dogs OR Canines) AND "mental health"
Parentheses are used around OR terms to group keywords together (just like in the order of operations in math) so that the database only applies the OR to those keywords.
OR is basically a shortcut for doing multiple searches at the same time, and should only be used for terms that are interchangeable, so it doesn't matter if only one is used.
Searching (Dogs OR Canines) and "Mental Health" is effectively searching at the same time:
(Dogs AND "Mental Health")
OR
(Canines AND "Mental Health")
Because it's combining multiple searches into one search, OR will broaden your search, giving you more results, because it catches all the articles that include one or more of the suggested keywords in the OR search statement. Because many of the SUU library databases are housed in the EBSCOhost platform, there is a good chance you will use at least one of these when researching in your discipline. See below for two examples of how the same OR search might look in an EBSCOhost database. As shown in the second image below, you still need to use parentheses for OR statements even if you use the stacked search boxes.
NOT is use when you want to exclude a keyword from your results, such as in the case of homonyms, or when the same spelling of a word means different things. Such as when you are researching about mental stress, but your results keep talking about broken bones, or stress fractures.
Stress NOT Fracture
NOT will narrow your search because it will eliminate any results that contain the keyword after it.
