KEYWORDS or KEYWORD PHRASES are words or phrases that describe your topic.

Usually descriptive adjective and nouns.

When you do a keyword search in a library database, it searches

• Title
• Subject   
• Abstract
• Author

Write a sentence describing your topic,

1. Pick out the important words or phrases -- these are your keywords
2. Make a list of synonyms for each of the words or phrases
3. Search and see which are the best for your topic.
4. Put phrases in quotation marks:  for example "temperature change"

If you first set of keywords does not give you the articles you need:

1. Make a list of synonyms or phrases that have similar meanings to your first set of keywords
2. Make searches with the synonyms
3. If you find even one article that is right on target, look at the Subjects assigned to that article and use those as search terms.

Boolean Search

And / Or / Not

This is an algebraic concept, but don't let that scare you away. Boolean connectors are all about sets. There are three little words that are used as Boolean connectors:

• and
• or
• not

Think of each keyword as having a "set" of results that are connected with it. These sets can be combined to produce a different "set" of results. You can also exclude certain "sets" from your results by using a Boolean connector.

AND is a connector that requires both words to be present in each record in the results. Use AND to narrow your search.

The words "HIV' and 'Denialis* will both be present in each record.

OR is a connector that allows either word to be present in each record in the results. Use OR to expand your search.

Either 'adolescents' or 'teenagers' (or both) will be present in each record.

NOT is a connector that requires the first word be present in each record in the results, but only if the record does not contain the second word.

So a search for HIV AND adolescents OR teenagers NOT in the United States..

?     A question mark  is called a wild card.  In a search, it replaces one character within a word.

• for example:  you can search Sub-Sahar?n if you are unsure whether it is spelled Saharen or Saharan (correct spelling).
• a pound sign (#) is used as a wild card if you want to replace 2 or more letters within a word.

*     An asterisk is used for truncation. It is always placed at the end.  It searches for all words that start with the root phrase before the pound sign. The * represents any number of letters at the end of the word.

• For example, if you want to search variations of a term, or are unsure of spelling:  white-tai* deer 
  will retrieve both white-tail deer and white-tailed deer (correct form)
• This also works well for plurals that have different endings, or for alternate spellings for terms that are spelled differently in other English-speaking countries

Proximity Searches in EBSCO (Academic Search Complete)

You can use a proximity search to search for two or more words that occur within a specified number of words (or fewer) of each other in the databases. Proximity searching is used with a Keyword or Boolean search.

The proximity operators are composed of a letter (N or W) and a number (to specify the number of words). The proximity operator is placed between the words that are to be searched, as follows:

Near Operator (N) - N5 finds the words if they are within five wordsof one another regardless of the order in which they appear.

For example, type tax N5 reform to find results that would match tax reform as well as reform of income tax.

Within Operator (W) - In the following example, W8 finds the words if they are within eight words of one another and in the order in which you entered them.

For example, type tax W8 reform to find results that would match tax reform but would not match reform of income tax.

In addition, multiple terms can be used on either side of the operator. See the following examples:

(baseball or football or basketball) N5 (teams or players)

oil W3 (disaster OR clean-up OR contamination)