Research skill development includes being able to find information by topic as well as finding items when you are unsure of enough details of author/editor or title to search just by these.
Sometimes you may know an author's surname but no initial, the surnames of two or more authors or editors, some title words but not the first couple of words, or you might have a subject you want to search.
The Keywords (use and, or, not, " ") option of The Catalogue is useful for searching in such circumstances.
AND LOGIC
Search 1
You know the surname of an author of a book but it is a common surname e.g. BANKS. You're not sure of the title but you think it includes the word HEALTH.
To search on Banks as an author would be painful, there are more than 100 separate author records with that surname, producing a list of more than 300 books.
A keyword search using both terms BANKS and HEALTH will considerably reduce the number of books found by the catalogue, making it easier for you to find the one you want.
Your search is for books that include in their titles or authors both of the words
BANKS and HEALTH.
You need to tell The Catalogue that you want both of these words to appear in the record for a book. To do this you need to use AND logic.
For searches such as this, you need to put 'and' between the search terms when using Keywords (use and, or, not, " ").
 |
Use the Library Catalogue
In the Search for: box type banks and health
In the by: box select Keywords (use and, or, not, " ").
Click on the Search button. |
The Catalogue found 46 records (Jan 2009). From this list it should be fairly easy to identify the required title. Click on the title, or the number in brackets on the left to see the details of an item.
Search 2
How would you search for books and other items on blood clotting or blood coagulation or both?
Your search is for items that have either clotting or coagulation in the title or as a subject. You need to use OR logic.
This is represented in the figure below by all the area enclosed by the two circles including the white intersecting part.
You need to put 'or' between the search terms in The Catalogue. Your search becomes
clotting or coagulation in the Search for: box,
with Keywords (use and, or, not, " ") in the by: box.
Click on the Search button.
In Jan 2009 this search found 114 items.
Truncation
You might want to include other words in your search such as clot, clotted, clots, coagulate, etc. You could include these words in your search joined by or. Even better you can use truncation to cut down on the typing and reduce typing errors. The Catalogue uses the truncation symbol ? to do this sort of searching for you.
If you type clot?, The Catalogue will find items that have the keywords clot, clotted, clotting, clots as though you had linked them with or. Although this is quite nice you have to remember that this search will also find cloth, clothes, clothing, etc. Truncation usually broadens your search and you usually retrieve more items.
NOT Logic
You can use 'not' to remove terms from a search. e.g. retroviruses not HIV to find books on retroviruses that aren't dominated by a discussion of HIV. You should be very wary of using NOT logic though, because you can often lose useful information.
Combining Search Logic
You can combine several pieces of search logic to make searching convenient, but you have to be careful.
Search 3
You want something on the public health aspects of either influenza or tuberculosis or both.
How do you enter this?
Because you want find either influenza or tuberculosis or both you need to use OR logic.
Because you want to limit the items you find to those dealing with public health you need to use AND logic. You can do these searches together.
Let's say you select Keyword (use and, or, not, " ") and type in
influenza or tuberculosis and public and health
Will this find exactly what you're after?
It will not!
Brackets
Use brackets ( ) to make sure that The Catalogue will search for terms joined by OR logic before it does anything else. The search becomes
(influenza or tuberculosis) and public and health
Try this search now. How is this different from the previous search?
The Catalogue will always perform logic within brackets before other logic searches. This can get tricky if there are several terms to be included in your search. I suggest that you use a logic grid to help sort out whether you use AND, or OR and where to use brackets.
Logic Grids
Being able to use synonyms and alternative terms, and combining these with appropriate logic in a search is a very important part of research skill development. If you can confidently combine the best terms in the most appropriate manner then your searching will be optimal.
Write down each concept that you want to search.
Now underneath each of these concepts write down all the synonyms or alternative terms you can think of.
To search for prevention and treatment of influenza in Australia and New Zealand
you might draw up a logic grid like the one below. Using a thesaurus, or words from your textbooks and lectures will usually help you to construct a logic grid.
| influenza |
treat? |
australia? |
| flu |
therap? |
zealand |
| . |
prevent? |
. |
| . |
control |
. |
| . |
vaccin? |
. |
Now you can combine the terms in the first column using OR logic because these are synonyms or alternative terms for the first concept.
(influenza or flu)
Next you can combine all the terms in the second column with OR logic
(treat? or therap? or prevent? or control or vaccin?)
Then the third column
(australia? or zealand)
Finally you combine these three searches using AND logic because you are looking for items that combine all three concepts.
(influenza or flu) and (treat? or therap? or prevent? or control or vaccin?) and (australia? or zealand)
You can type this into the Search for: box with Keyword (use and, or, not, " ") selected in the by: box.
Logon to MyUni to answer Question 3 of the Health Sciences Library Tutorial
Go to the next section of the tutorial Guided Keyword Search
Back to the previous section of the tutorial Searching by Author or Editor
Back to the tutorial Table of Contents
