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Pollak Library

ENGLISH 301: Journal Articles

Databases by Subject/Department

Links to 1) Databases by Subject, or Names of Databases; 2) Research Guides to find more databases and research help specific to your major or discipline. 

Multidisciplinary Databases

Sciences | Technology

Search Examples & Strategies

Search Examples & Strategies

Be elastic & be specific. Both are necessary. Narrow down your topic when your topic is too broad or when you find too much information. Expand your topic when you do not find enough information. You can also use the following techniques to help you narrow down or expand your searches.

Search Techniques

  1. AND -- to narrow down/refine a topic by combining words together

    electronic commerce AND cloud computing
    Big Data AND health care outcome
     
  2. OR -- use nested search to include synonyms or related words

    (social media OR twitter)
    (artificial intelligence OR AI)

  3. "   " -- use double quotes to search words as a phrase and to make searches more precise

    "Social media"
    "machine learning"

     
  4.  -- use the asterisk/wildcard to truncate words so you can retrieve letters after the stem

    teach* ->  teach, teacher, teachers, teaching
    pollut* -> pollute, pollutes, pollutant, polluting, pollution

 

Subject Words


Look for subject words on your topic.
Subject words are "controlled vocabulary" -- words and phrases -- that are used to categorize / organize informations resources (books, articles, and other media) so researchers can find them easily: Grouped under a "subject" regardless of what synonyms, variant spellings, and homographs authors/editors may have used. Researchers can't invent subject words but they can discover the subject word(s) for a topic in the description of a book, an article, or other information sources. ~ paraphrased from this source.