lesson 3: using search techniques
TRANSCRIPT
Information Literacy for Adult Learners
CPRG 105: Lesson 3 Using Search Techniques
Boolean OperatorsTruncation
What encourages young people in America to vote?
How to search…???
Copying and pasting this sentence into anonline catalog or databasesearch box will NOT yield you (m)any results!!!
Warning:
DuCat – Online Catalog
ProQuest Central - Database
• 2 Newspaper articles• 1 Magazine article• 1 Scholarly journal article
3 of which were irrelevant!
What encourages young people in America to vote?
Key concepts in your question
Search TermsAnd
Boolean Operators
Keywords and Alternate Terms
Young People
• Youth• Young adults
Vote
• Votes/voted• Voting
America
• United States• US
HOW do you combine your different search terms to find the results you are looking for?
Use Boolean operators and
truncation with your search terms to help you create effective search strings
Combining search terms
Connecting terms that broaden or narrow a search
AND narrows your search
OR broadens your search
Boolean Operators
Use AND to connect two different key concepts
FOR EXAMPLE:
Voting AND Youth
AND
Use OR to connect similar or alternate terms that convey one of your concepts
FOR EXAMPLE:
Youth OR Young People OR Young Adults
OR
RESEARCH QUESTION: What encourages young people to vote?
My two key concepts are:YOUNG PEOPLE and VOTE
Say, I want to look in DuCat for books that address BOTH of those concepts.
How can I do this?
My Topic involves the Youth Vote
• Youth• Young adults
Young people
• Voting• VotedVote
First of all, I look at my terms
Voting
Youth
I decide I want to do a simple search:
If I do a search in DuCat for…
I get 510 titles.
I get 4,474 titles.
If I do a search in DuCat for…
I get 6 titles.
They will address BOTH voting AND youth.
NARROWS my search
Gets me FEWER results
Gets me sources that contain info on BOTH of the different key concepts
AND
Voting AND youth
BUT… I want to take into account the fact that there are alternate terms for youth◦ Young adults◦ Young people
OK, I now have sources with:
If I do a search in DuCat for…
I already know I will get 4, 474 titles
I get 330 titles
If I do a search in DuCat for…
I get 4,727 titles.
These records will contain EITHER youth OR young adults.
BROADENS my search
Gets me MORE results
Gets me sources that contain EITHER of the similar concepts
OR
What if I put it all together?
VOTING AND(YOUTH OR YOUNG PEOPLE OR YOUNG ADULTS)
NESTED SEARCH: Combining OR and AND searches
I do a search in DuCat for…
I get 8 titles.
Boolean Operators
AND OR
NARROWS your search
Gives you FEWER
You want sources that are about BOTH Topic 1 AND Topic 2
BROADENS your search
Gives you MORE
You want sources that are about EITHER Topic 1 OR Topic 2
Keys to Boolean Operators
OR gives you MORE.Use OR to connect SIMILAR terms.
Use AND to connect DIFFERENT concepts.
Truncation
Way to search for variations on a search term using the base
DuCat uses $
Databases use *
College$◦ college◦ colleges
Universit$◦ university◦ universities
Vot$◦ vote◦ votes◦ voted◦ votingvotive
Vot$ AND (youth OR young people OR young adults)
Nested Search w/ Truncation
How many titles do you get?
19
Which gives you MOST?
a. cars
b. cars AND automobiles
c. cars OR automobiles
Boolean Review
Which gives you MOST?
a. cars
b. cars AND automobiles
c. cars OR automobiles
Boolean Review
Which gives you FEWEST?
a. cars
b. cars AND automobiles
c. cars OR automobiles
Boolean Review
Which gives you FEWEST?
a. cars
b. cars AND automobiles
c. cars OR automobiles
Boolean Review
Which gives you MORE?
a. automobiles
b. automobil*
Truncation Review
Which gives you MORE?
a. automobiles
b. automobil*
Truncation Review