Basics of Information Seeking

When you search for the phrase social media to find information on social media, you may end up getting thousands of irrelevant results.

This may be due to the search engine not searching for the words as a phrase but as separate words that are not necessarily next to each other.

Many databases allow you to specify that adjacent words should be searched as a phrase.

• Usually you can use quotation marks around the phrase: "social media", e.g. in the Volter library database.
• Some databases may automatically search for adjacent search words as a phrase, without requiring any special characters or operators.
• Some databases have proximity operators available to look for words that are close to each other, e.g. WITHIN or NEAR operators in the Academic Search Premier database.

Check the database’s search instructions to find out how adjacent words and phrases are intrepreted!

In many databases you can truncate or shorten search words to find different spellings or endings, e.g. child* –> child, children, childhood. Truncation broadens your search. A common truncation symbol is an asterisk, *.

• In Volter and many other databases, such as EbscoHost's ERIC, the truncation symbol is an asterisk, *.
• e.g. search word comput* finds compute, computer, computers, computing.

Truncation symbols may vary by database. Check the database’s search instructions to find out which symbol is used!

Think about where you truncate your search words. If you truncate too soon, you will get irrelevant results. For example comp* will retrieve complaint and compatibility. If you truncate too late, you will not get all useful spellings or endings.

Some databases allow you to use truncation in a phrase, e.g. "quantum comput*". However, this is not possible in all databases but your search may fail because of this. Check the database's instructions and see if you can use truncation inside quotation marks.

In some databases you can substitute one or more letters in the middle of a word. This is helpful when a word has different ways of spelling. The symbol for substituting letters is usually called a wildcard.

Always check the database’s search instructions to find out which symbol is used as a wildcard!