Berntsen Library Blog

Top Five Tips for Getting the Most Out of Library Search

Do you ever feel like you're not speaking the same language as your search engine? Do you type in your question or phrase and either get no results, or way too many? Or you see results completely unrelated to what you're looking for? We know that feeling! We're here with some key tips to help you get on the same page with Library Search and start finding the sources you need. 

1. Break your search into keywords with quotation marks

One of the most common mistakes we see is typing an entire sentence or question into the search bar and just hitting enter. This gives the algorithm way too much information with no way to tell what is most important. You can see in the example below that this can bring up tens of thousands of results! Searches like this grab all of the results that include the less important words too, like "in" and "sources", so it is very likely that many of these results will be unrelated to your goal.

Instead of one long string of words, try picking out the most important words or phrases that will show up most often in a useful source - the keywords. You can see below that this search using keywords yielded much fewer results, but it has a much higher likelihood that each result will actually be useful. If you have a keyword phrase, you should always put it in quotation marks; this tells the algorithm to only look for those words together in that order. You may be wondering about the big AND in the middle. That brings us to our next tip!

2. Use Boolean search operators

Boolean operators (named for the logician George Boole) are words or symbols that can be combined with your search terms to give the algorithm very specific instructions on how to search. The most common ones are AND, OR, and NOT. Adding these words between your keywords can bump your searching to a whole new level. Be sure to capitalize them so the algorithm knows they are not search terms themselves. You saw above how the AND operator functioned in the sustainable energy search. Here are some examples of how the others can be used.

"community theater" OR "community theatre"

Using the OR operator is helpful if there are keywords that could be spelled in more than one way, or that probably won't both appear in the same result together.

"Julius Caesar" NOT Shakespeare 

This search will help you find resources about Julius Caesar the person instead of Julius Caesar the play by William Shakespeare. The NOT in the middle tells the algorithm to exclude results containing any words that appear after it in the search.

"human cloning" AND (moral* OR ethic*)

This example combines the last two operators we're going to discuss: the parentheses and the asterisk. The parentheses are used similarly to how you may have seen in math equations. They lump phrases together and tell the algorithm to apply any given rule to them exclusively or in a certain order. In this case, I wanted to see results about human cloning and morals, as well as human cloning and ethics. This was shorter than doing two searches, one for "human cloning" AND ethics, another for "human cloning" AND morals. 

The asterisk acts as kind of a "fill in the blank" for when you're searching for a word that could have many different suffixes. In this case, I wanted to include results that used the words moral, morals, morally, morality, ethic, ethics, ethically, and ethicality. This could have also been used in our first example with theater versus theatre, becoming theat*. 

For more information on searching in Library Search, and for the lowdown on the last operator that we didn't discuss (the question mark!), see this helpful page. 

3. Use facets

This is perhaps one of the most basic tips while also being the most helpful. As with probably any search engine you've ever used, whether it's through Google or your favorite online clothing retailer, Library Search offers a variety of facet options to limit your results. These facet options include resource type (books, articles, etc.), publication date, subject headings, institution, and more. Facets are crucial when you know you need to find resources that have been published within a certain timeframe, are from a scholarly source, are accessible online, and much more. The subject heading facet is a great place to look if you want to see only sources that present case studies and research, or if you're looking for a specific topic within a broader search scope. The resource type facet is helpful if your professor has put stipulations on the type of resource you can use, such as articles or books. There is even a language facet if you are looking for results that are not in English. The options are almost endless!

4. Use recommended and related reading

Sometimes the algorithm really is smarter than we are, despite our best searching tactics. Often when you click on a result there will be a "related reading" section along the right-hand side, and it's always wise to give it a glance. Additionally, some articles may have one or two red arrows next to the resource title, as shown below.

If you see these, always take a look at the articles. This is a quick way to see articles that are listed in your source's bibliography, or other sources that are citing your source. Either way, you could find the missing link in your research chain. There is a chance some of them won't be immediately available in our catalog, but they're always requestable through InterLibrary Loan. 

5. Search and re-search

This may sound obvious, but it's called research for a reason. All of the tips we've covered so far are designed to work together and to be revised based on the results you encounter. Not even the professionals can always find what they want on the first try; see how the algorithm responds to your search, and tweak it from there. Maybe excluding a certain keyword is limiting your results too much -- try leaving it in and using the subject facet instead. Maybe all your results are book reviews when you really want the book itself -- try hitting the exclude button to the right of the Reviews resource type facet. Maybe your AND Boolean operator would better serve you as an OR. Trying different combinations until you get what you're looking for is the foundation of research.

I hope you learned something new from our Top Five Tips. Here's a bonus tip - ask us for help! The library staff are always ready and eager to come alongside you to aid in your studies. We can walk you through Boolean searching again, show you the ins and out of subject headings, or just help you figure out the right keywords to use. From topic selection to formatting to footnotes, we've got you covered. 

See our help page for some great ways to contact us, or make an appointment here.