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ENGL 1102: Confronting Oppression: Searching Databases

A guide for Dr. Mary McGinnis' course, ENGL 1102: Confronting Oppression (CRN 21378 | Spring 2020)

Phrase Searching

Quotation Marks

Quotation marks keep words together as phrases for most databases. However, not all databases or search engines recognize this method. Some databases or search engines use parentheses or single quotes instead. Check the Help page if you're not sure. 

Credit: North Carolina State University Libraries on YouTube

Limiters

Most databases have limiters (sometimes called filters) to help you narrow the focus of your search. These tools are often in a column or box on the left side of your search results. The heading might say something like Refine Results or Tweak My Results, with check-boxes or drop-down menus. These options allow you to limit your search by selecting these options and more:

  • Full-Text
  • Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals
  • Publication Date Range
  • Limit by Type or Format (Journals, books, etc.)
  • Limit by Location 

What are Databases and Why You Need Them by Yavapai College Library on YouTube

Truncation & Wildcards

Truncation and Wildcard symbols

Truncation uses the asterisk (*) to help you broaden your search to include words with various endings or spellings.

   Example: Use the asterisk and the root word educat* to get educate, educated, education, educational, educator.

Wildcards also use symbols to help you find variations of words.

   Example: Use wom?n to get woman or women, or use col?r to get color or colour.

Truncation and wildcard symbols vary by database or search engine, but common ones include *, !, ?, or #. Check the database’s Help page before you search.

Credit: How Library Stuff Works: Boolean Modifiers "",*,() by McMaster Libraries on YouTube.

Tools

Most databases have tools to help you manage your research. Tools may include:
  • Permalink to help you navigate back to information
  • Citations with options to cite the source in various styles
  • Save to allow you to save to a file or to a folder within the database (if you have created an account)
  • Email so you can send it to yourself or someone else
https://libguides.ccga.edu/21378/search
libguides.ccga.edu
CC-MAIN-2024-10
40031
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:5YJWD6OCZHMIYJUDNWU7TKSZTPUJN5AA
<urn:uuid:a0f6dd1b-81c1-44c0-8e52-edd1f28d3e99>
2024-02-25T12:21:19Z
54.88.35.99
text/html
sha1:IECG7LWSFCNQXSBQSKGLRP3XAJ7KVA6R
<urn:uuid:7bd23cb0-70a4-4c9e-b955-e092e8a6dbcd>
https://libguides.ccga.edu/21378/search
response
<urn:uuid:bb3d5026-5da7-4b1e-81e2-556b6d82412c>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2024-10
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for February/March 2024
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-79
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.5-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/