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9 Individuals and Societies: Research Skills

HS Search Tips

   Search Tips:

  • Identify Key Words: Write out questions, circle necessary words, anticipate words in the answer
  • Use Booleans to narrow or broaden your search (And, Or, Not)
  • Use truncation (*) to catch more results (for example: creat* will bring create, creation, creating...)
  • Use quotation marks to keep exact phrases together ("Florida Marlins")
  • Use wildcards (?) to catch various spellings or meanings (wom?n brings woman and women)
  • Use a minus sign to filter out irrelevant results (-fish)
  • Filter results with "Search Tools" in Google
  • Search for files and scans using " filetype:pdf" in a search
  • Limit results by domain, such as .gov  .edu  .cn
  • Limit to terms in the title of a site or article with "intitle:"

Sample Search String:

  • "amnesty international"    iran   intitle:execution*    site:http://.gov    "cultur* impact"    -oil

Using Google? Choose Advanced Search

Build a search string with Boolify - a puzzle-style google search

Boolean Searching

AND

  • will find the words together to narrow your results
  • tells the database that ALL search terms must be included in the results
  • example: cloning AND humans AND ethics => a result about all three topics

OR

  • connects two or more similar concepts 
  • broadens your results, telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the resulting records
  • example: cloning OR genetics OR reproduction => Results can have 1, 2, or all of the words

NOT

  • excludes words you have identified as not helpful 
  • example: cloning NOT sheep => Gives results the limit a word, in this case "Sheep" should not appear