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Communication & Digital Media

Search Techniques

Boolean operators - AND, OR, and NOT.

  • Use AND to find results that include both terms. This narrows a search.
    • fake news AND social media

  • Use OR to find results that include one term or both. This broadens a search.
    • fake news OR falsehood
  • Use NOT to exclude unrelated terms.
    • social media NOT twitter

Phrase Searching " " - search the words together in a sentence, not as separate keywords. This narrows a search.

“social media”, “political election”

Truncation * - search different forms of word. This broadens a search.

technolog* finds technology, technologies

Different databases use different truncation symbols so it is important to check the database 'Help' information or 'Search Tips' for details about which symbol to use.

Search Strategy Builder

Designed to help you build a simple search string or statement using 2 Boolean operators; cut and paste the resulting search statement into the search box of a library database.

 

Enter your keywords here Key concept 1  AND  Key concept 2  AND  Key concept 3
Alternate
search terms		 Alternate
search terms		 Alternate
search terms
Enter alternate search terms for each concept. Use single words, or "short phrases" in quotes.

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Adapted from original creation by University of Arizona Libraries and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License