Expanding Your Search

1
Expanding Your Search

• If you want more items than your search
  retrieved, there are several ways to expand your
  search strategy.

2
Expand by Using Synonyms

• flu influenza
• car automobile
• road street highway
• germs bacteria
• doctor physician
• lawyer attorney

3
Expand by Using the Boolean Operator OR

• Finds materials that contain at least one word or
  phrase and sometimes both
• Use OR when you want to BROADEN your topic

4
to link all the terms related will findMANY
more results.

• If you search for
• Ibm OR mac 31,374 articles
• ibm OR mac OR pcs 31,764 articles
• Ibm OR mac OR pcs OR personal computers 39,481
• Ibm OR mac OR pcs OR personal computers OR
  macintosh 45,483 articles
• Ibm OR mac OR pcs OR personal computers OR
  macintosh OR international business machines
  48,477 articles(This is more than anybody
  wants to know about personal computers, but it
  shows the power of the "OR" operator.)

5
Limit by Using the Boolean Operator AND

• Finds materials that contains both words or
  phrases
• Use AND when you want to NARROW your topic

6
Suppose you are looking for information on body
image and how it is influenced by the media.

• body image 1,170 articles
• media 90,850 articles
• body image AND media 87 articles

7
Limit by Using the Boolean Operator NOT

• You can use the NOT to exclude specific terms
  from your search.

8
Suppose you are looking for articles on cancer,
but you do not want your articles to talk about
the diagnosis of cancer.

• Cancer 88,042 articles
• Cancer NOT diagnosis 80,589 articles

9
REFINING YOUR SEARCH
10
Use a Thesaurus

• Thesaurus a very
• large list of exact
• words used as
• subject headings in
• a database (each
• database has its own
• list of words)

11
Expand by Using Wild Cards or Truncation

• Wild cards are symbols that take the place of
  letters. They may appear either inside a word or
  at the end.
• The term truncate (to shorten by cutting off) is
  sometimes used. Each database uses its own wild
  card symbol.

? !
12
To use a wildcard will findMANY more results

• If you search for
• Womn 209,532 articles
• Among these are
• Woman 36,952 articles
• Women 181,805 articles
• Womyn 46 articles

13
Diet

• Will find
• Diet
• Diets
• Dietary
• Dietitian
• Dieting

14
Limiting Your Search

• Most electronic databases have features which
  help you to limit your search.