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GEOG_5231/G Economic Geography: Basic Search Tips

Course guide to help students in Economic Geography navigate library resources available to them

Image detailing difference between Natural Language Search, Key Term Search, and Subject Search

Search Query

Video recording detailing how to develop a search query from KeyWords. 

You will want to start with KeyWords, and then move to Subject Terms if possible. Subject Terms can/will often be provided by the databases. 

Limiting and Expanding Your Search Using And, Or, Not...

Boolean searching involves adding or subtracting terms to your search to either broaden or narrow your search.

It uses three terms (AND, OR, NOT) to tell the search engine or database whether to include or eliminate certain terms.                                  

 

                                                                                                                                                                            

AND/OR The Difference

Remember, OR is going to expand your results. It is great for the following situations:

  • To retrieve all members of an entire class of items - be sure to include the name of the class!  Citrus OR Oranges OR Lemons OR Tangerines OR Grapefruit.
  • Search both the acronym or initialism and the full name:  "electric vehicle" OR EV, "high-speed rail" OR HSR OR "bullet train"
  • Search both Common and Scientific Names: Poison Oak OR Toxicodendron diversilobum
  • Search similar concepts *like in the video!   Salty OR Salinity
  • And sometimes you can actually use acronyms to fully express your concept:  dehydration OR hydration,   fertility OR sterility

AND will narrow your results! 

Salty AND Sweet:  The database will pull items that only deal with both of these in the same source! 

 

Targeting Your Search Using Quotation Marks...

Quotation Marks can be used to identify Phrases.

By using quotations marks, you can tell the computer to only bring back pages with the terms you typed in the exact order you typed them.

"feminist geography"

Instead of 

feminist AND geography

 

"rural economic development" 

Instead of 

rural AND economic AND development

 

Expanding Your Search Using Truncation...

Truncation - allows you to search various forms of a word by finding alternative endings. The characher (*) is placed at the end of the first few letters of a search term or at the end of its root.

Ethic* retrieves

Ethics

Ethical

Ethically

Additional Tips (Including Internet Searches)

 

Nesting - allows you to combine different elements (AND, OR, using quotation marks) to acheive a solid search query. 

("Electric Vehicle" OR EV) AND "Economic Impact"    

This format provides very specific instructions to the database you are searching. The items within the parenthesis will be searched first. Using Quotation Marks around Electric Vehicle tells the database to count this as a single phrase or unit. The OR EV tells the database to pull resources that refer to Electric Vehicles as EV as well the full name. The AND then links this search to Economic Impact, which is also in quotation marks so it will be treated as a single phrase or unit. 

Refining Internet Searches:

  • site:.edu - limit to domains ending in .edu 
  • site.gov - limit to domains ending in .gov (official US government resources)
    • "Economic Impact" AND "Electric Vehicle" site:energy.gov
      • Searches the US Department of Energy's website for the key phrases "Economic Impact" And "Electric Vehicle"
  • "Economic Impact" AND "Electric Vehicle"  site:nytimes.com
    • Searches the NY Times for the key phrases "Economic Impact" And "Electric Vehicle"

 

 

Remember!

  • Notice the Subject Terms, Key Words, Author Supplied Key Words, or MeSH Terms for a chosen article
  • Be sure to save PermaLinks or Doi Identifiers - NOT the basic URL at the top of your computer. 
  • DO NOT Limit to  Full Text Only! This will seriously cut out some possible sources for you. Request through ILL.
  • The Chat function is available in this guide, or on the library's home page if you need immediate assistance!