The Search: Basic Boosts

Step 5

Our first 3.5 minute video showcases the first stage of a comprehensive search. It puts your pre-thinking to work, ensuring you have relevant results to peruse without being overwhelmed by the numbers. It also shows you have to start limiting or filtering your results to zero in on more appropriate resources.

As you may have noticed, I searched differently from how you might. The original typing in of our search concepts may have looked strange. Let’s make sure you understand what’s behind my strange typing! Click on the different hotspots or question marks to understand how each “weird” typing assists with the search.

These search modifiers can shave hours off your research while providing more relevant results for your academic work. Sound research is key to making your arguments and crafting your academic work; you want to make sure you have this strong foundation on which to build. To that end, we are going to spend some time ensuring you understand these key strategies in research.

Solidify Your Search Boosters

Boolean Logic | Operators

While not the sexiest of terms, in fact the phrase sounds a tad scary, boolean logic is the backbone of searching. Since it involves words we use all the time, but don’t always stop to ponder what they mean, and they impact your search strategies at their basic level, we’re going to take a few moments to truly understand what happens when we use them.

A colleague from the Carnegie Vincent Library at Lincoln Memorial University offers up a succinct and memorable explanation and in under three minutes!

Solidify Understanding

Classifying

Take a few moments to make sure you understand the meaning of Boolean operators. Separate out some favourite snacks: chocolate, nuts, and chocolate and nuts. If you are not a chocolate bar expert, consult ingredients.

Searching

Using the Venn diagram below (with sections A, B, C), choose the correct answer to the questions.