Section 6. Searching the catalogue for books on a topic.
The catalogue gives you a number of ways of searching for books on a specific topic. The success of your search will depend very much on the language you choose and the way you combine terms. One of the keyword options described in Section 3 can be used to search for material on a specific subject.
Keyword searching hints
1. Keyword (search engine style)
The Keywords (search engine style) option is very limited, as the terms you type in will be combined using AND. Never use this option if you want to include alternative terms in your search - for example adolesce? or teenage? or youth. It simply won't deal with OR
2. Keyword (use and, or, not, " ")
This is a much better option, as you are no longer restricted to using only AND to connect terms. However you'll need to make sure that your logical operators (ANDs, ORs, and NOTs) work the way you intended. Click here to see an explanation of Boolean logic (the use of logical operators, and the importance of brackets in search strategies).
Using this option you can now perform a search which will combine attitude? with either adolesce? or teenage? or youth, and it will look like this
attitude? and (adolesce? or teenage? or youth)
3. Guided Keyword Search
This option, while similar to Keyword (using and, or, not " "), allows easy searching for words in specific fields. The example below shows a search very similar to example 2, but in this case attitude? is being searched only in the Subject Heading field.
Note You cannot enter ( ), OR or AND within the Guided Keyword search boxes. Use the drop down options at the end of the box.
Refer to the image above, and try the search in Guided Keyword. Remember, you cannot enter ( ), OR or AND within the Guided Keyword search boxes. Notice that in the image above, attitude? has been restricted to search by Subject Heading. For the terms in the second box "Any of these" has been selected from the options at the end of the box, and the search by option has been left at the default - Any Keywords.
Now compare the results with a search using
attitude? and (adolesce? or teenage? or youth)
and the Keyword (using and, or, not " ") in the Basic Search option.
The reason for the difference in results is that the Guided Keyword example looks for attitude? only in the Subject Heading, whereas the search using the Keyword (using and, or, not " ") option in Basic Search looks for attitude? anywhere - titles, chapter titles, notes etc.
Questions
Which search option(s) would you choose to search for books on adolescent attitudes?
Why?
(I've shown the questions the way they'd appear in the Keywords (using and, or, not " ") option in Basic Search)
1. "attitudes of adolescents"
2. attitud? and (adolesce? or teenage? or youth)
3. attitude and adolescents or adolescence or teenage or teenagers or youth
4. attitud? and adolesce? and teenage? and youth
ANSWERS |
Answers
1. "attitudes of adolescents"
This
would be a very ineffectual way to search as it would find only items containing that exact phrase - so, for example, if there was a book with the phrase "adolescent attitudes" somewhere in the title, this search would not find it. The search would find only a very small fraction of the books we hold on this topic - in fact when I tested it, it found none!!
2. attitude? and (adolesce? or teenage? or youth)
Don't try to run this search in Keyword (search engine style) - remember that Keyword (search engine style) can't deal with OR. Used in the other keyword options this strategy should find lots of material. This is by far the best of the search options listed. Because the truncation symbol ? has been used, this search will look for the words attitude, attitudes . It will then combine each of them with any of the following - adolescent, adolescents, adolescence, teenage, teenager, teenagers, or youth. The brackets ensure that attutde?, the first part of the search, is combined with any of the terms contained within the brackets. A very simple rule of searching is to make sure you put all terms connected by OR in brackets. This will ensure that the logic works the way you intend. When I tested this search I found over 150 references.
3. attitude and adolescents or adolescence or teenage or teenagers or youth
This is a bad strategy for a number of reasons. First of all the lack of truncation of "attitude" means that the plural isn't found. The next problem is the logic (or lack of it). If you test this search you'll find you get thousands of books. most of which won't be what you want. The way that the search will be interpreted is to combine attitude and adolescents. The rest of the terms will be searched individually, so you'll get thousands of books on adolescence or teenage or teenagers or youth, almost all of which will have nothing at all to do with adolescent attitudes - and who wants to sort through over 4,000 titles to see which might be relevant!! The results if you attempt it in Keyword (search engine style) will be completely bizarre - remember that Keyword (search engine style) can't deal with OR.
4. attitud? and adolesce? and teenage? and youth
Surprisingly this search fares better than the first example, although it's still a very bad strategy. Because all of the terms are connected by AND, every one of the words in the search must be contained in each record it retrieves - it finds 3 items. |
