Union Lists : Prerequisites to Searching
Basic Search Strategies
Boolean Logic
Boolean logic uses search "operators" AND, OR, NOT (or AND NOT) to broaden or narrow searches. NOT should be used sparingly, if at all.
Synonyms
Synonyms are words with the same or overlapping meaning. Use OR to combine synonyms.
Example: (eroticism OR love) AND (medieval OR middle ages)
Nesting
Nesting uses parentheses around search terms to tell the database to search for those terms before searching for others or for combining nested searches. Nesting is primarily used when combining synonyms with the OR operator.
Phrase Searching
Phrase searching retrieves records/documents where one or more words appear in a particular order. Quotation marks "" are generally used for phrase searching. Note that many databases default to phrase searching, while others default to AND searching, so it is best to use quotation marks to be explicit.
Example: protestant reformation might be searched as a phrase in one database — "protestant reformation" — but searched as — protestant AND reformation — in another, yielding a different set of results.
Prepositions and Articles
Avoid using prepositions or articles in your search strategies.
Example: steinbeck AND "motion pictures" — is preferable to — steinbeck in motion pictures.
If you must use articles or prepositions, put your phrase in quotation marks
Example: "The Grapes of Wrath"
Truncation
Use a truncation symbol when you want to find words with the same prefix or root, or for both singular and plural forms of a word. It is usually asterisk [*] or question mark [?], but may differ from one catalog/database to another, so check the database's "Search Help" section to be sure.
Example: hydrolog* would return hydrology, hydrologist, hydrological, etc.
Wildcard
A wildcard is a symbol used to substitute in for one or more characters in a word. It is often the same symbol as is used for truncation.
Example: gr*y would return grey and gray; colo*r would return color and colour.
Other Resources
Search Strategy Builder — The Search Strategy Builder is a tool designed to teach you how to create a search string using Boolean logic.
Getting to Know Bibliographic Records — This page can help you to craft more successful search strategies by taking note of how items have been cataloged or indexed in the database
Research Rules to Live By — This is the larger "guide" that the previous page is a part of. Many parts of it are relevant to searching union lists. All of it is relevant to doing in-depth research.