Indigenous Studies Resource Guide: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: Basic Searching for Resources
Tips and Tools
Boolean operators form the basis of database logic.
- They connect your search words together to either narrow or broaden your set of results.
- The three basic boolean operators are: AND, OR, and NOT.
Why use Boolean operators?
- To focus a search, particularly when your topic contains multiple search terms.
- To connect various pieces of information to find exactly what you're looking for.
- Example:
second creation (title) AND wilmut and campbell (author) AND 2000 (year)
See bottom columns for more information on how to conduct searching, or see the reference librarian for an appointment.
Key words
Subject headings describe the content of each item in a database. Use these headings to find relevant items on the same topic. Searching by subject headings (a.k.a. descriptors) is the most precise way to search article databases.
It is not easy to guess which subject headings are used in a given database. For example, the phone book's Yellow Pages use subject headings. If you look for "Movie Theatres" you will find nothing, as they are listed under the subject heading "Theatres - Movies."
Keyword searching is how you typically search web search engines. Think of important words or phrases and type them in to get results.
Here are some key points about each type of search:
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Connectors and Terms
Use AND in a search to:
- narrow your results
- tell the database that ALL search terms must be present in the resulting records
- example: cloning AND humans AND ethics
Be aware: In many, but not all, databases, the AND is implied.
- For example, Google automatically puts an AND in between your search terms.
- Though all your search terms are included in the results, they may not be connected together in the way you want.
- For example, this search: college students test anxiety is translated to: college AND students AND test AND anxiety. The words may appear individually throughout the resulting records.
- You can search using phrases to make your results more specific.
- For example: "college students" AND "test anxiety". This way, the phrases show up in the results as you expect them to be.
Use OR in a search to:
- connect two or more similar concepts (synonyms)
- broaden your results, telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the resulting records
- example: cloning OR genetics OR reproduction
Use NOT in a search to:
- exclude words from your search
- narrow your search, telling the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms
- example: cloning NOT sheep
Databases follow commands you type in and return results based on those commands. Be aware of the logical order in which words are connected when using Boolean operators:
- Databases usually recognize AND as the primary operator, and will connect concepts with AND together first.
- If you use a combination of AND and OR operators in a search, enclose the words to be "ORed" together in parentheses.
Examples:
- ethics AND (cloning OR reproductive techniques)
- (ethic* OR moral*) AND (bioengineering OR cloning)
Other Tips
- America: History and Life This link opens in a new windowHistory of the United States and Canada. More InfoPartial Full-Text UB ONLY
- Academic OneFile (Gale) This link opens in a new windowFull-text articles from the world's leading journals and reference sources. More InfoFull-Text UB ONLY
- American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection This link opens in a new windowA vast collection of American historical periodicals, 17th-20th century. More InfoFull-Text UB ONLY
- Digital Public Library of America This link opens in a new windowItems from libraries, archives, and museums. More InfoFull-Text PUBLIC
- Gale eBooks (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library) This link opens in a new windowFull-text entries from encyclopedias and reference works published by Gale Group More InfoFull-Text UB ONLY
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowSearch portal provided by Gale. More InfoFull-Text UB ONLY
- U.S. History (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new windowHistorical context for events in the history of North America, from Viking arrivals to the War on Terror. More InfoFull-Text UB ONLY
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowA digital repository of online books and other scholarly materials. More InfoPartial Full-Text PUBLIC
- Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowWorld history excluding U.S. and Canada; 1450-present. More InfoPartial Full-Text UB ONLY
- Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition Online This link opens in a new windowHistorical statistics and comprehensive essays placing the data in context from colonial times through the present. More InfoData UB ONLY
- LLMC Digital This link opens in a new windowFull-text image based searchable database of legal publications. More InfoFull-Text UB ONLY
- Law Commons This link opens in a new windowThe Law Commons is part of the bepress Digital Commons Network. This searchable and browseable database provides free access to full-text law-related scholarly articles and other research from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. More InfoFull-Text PUBLIC
- ProQuest Indian Claims Insight This link opens in a new windowIndian Claims Insight is a research tool that provides researchers with the opportunity to understand and analyze Native American migration and resettlement throughout U.S. history, as well as U.S. Government Indian removal policies and subsequent actions to address Native American claims. More InfoFull-Text UB ONLY
- Social Science Research Network (SSRN) This link opens in a new windowDevoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research. More InfoUB ONLY