Using Advanced Search techniques
Syntax searching is the process of building a structured search. Using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) combined with punctuation and phrase searching, allows you to search multiple concepts at one time, across platforms. Boolean operators are fairly standard across databases, and should always be used with punctuation to create a complex search.
Along with using Boolean operators, you will need to include punctuation to structure the search. Be aware, punctuation rules differ across databases and may change.
When searching databases, we often search with keywords we already know or acquire from known materials. While keyword searching is useful, you must also know your subject terms/thesaurus.
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Keywords |
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Subjects |
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•natural language words describing your topic - good to start with
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•pre-defined "controlled vocabulary" words used to describe the content of each item (book, journal article) in a database
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•more flexible to search by - can combine in many ways
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•less flexible to search by - need to know the exact controlled vocabulary term
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•database looks for keywords anywhere in the record - not necessarily connected together
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•database looks for subjects only in the subject heading or descriptor field, where the most relevant words appear
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•may yield too many or too few results
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•if too many results - also uses subheadings to focus on one aspect of the broader subject
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•may yield many irrelevant results
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•results usually very relevant to the topic
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Think of Subjects like online tags, you gather all the content for an idea under one heading. Subjects are relevance ranked; the most relevant topic is listed first. PubMed/MEDLINE/Cochrane use “medical subject headings” or MeSH. CINAHL uses “CINAHL headings”