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Pandemic Literature-Hughes: Home

Welcome

How to Use this Guide

Hello! Welcome to the libguide for Pandemic Literature, Professor Hughes course. This guide has been created to help you navigate possible resources for your research assignments. As you can see, the guide has tabs running across the top with different labels. These tabs are called "pages" and each page of this guide is meant to provide insight on using specific typs of resouces. The guide is meant to be point of need help, so there is no definitive order or process for how you work through each page. Remember, your library liaison is more than happy to help you with finding credible and appropriate sources for your research. Please do not hesitate to reach out. You will find all contact information you need on the Need Help page! 

bitmoji image showing female character in green shirt holding red book in hand and two books near side

Reminder!

If you do not already have one, be sure to set up your ILLIAD account for Inter Library Loan. Simply click on the link for Illiad, and then be sure to click on First Time Users! You only have to fill out this form once!

Developing an Effective Search Strategy Involves: 

  • Identifyng the key search concepts

  • Identifying related terms to the key search concepts

  • Using standard search structures to broaden and narrow your search results

While there is not ONE right way to do a search, the strategies identified on this page will improve your results!

Using Quotation Marks in Your Search:

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.

"skin cancer"

Instead of 

skin AND cancer

"literary criticism"

Instead of 

literary AND criticism

 

 

Using Truncation in your Search:

Truncation allows you to search various forms of a word by finding alternative endings.

The character (*) is placed at the end of the first few letters of a search term or at the end of its root.

Litera*

Retrieves Literature, Literary, Literata 

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:  HPLC OR high-performance liquid chromatography
  • Search both Common and Scientific Names: Poison Oak OR Toxicodendron diversilobum
  • Search similar concepts *like we did above!   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!