Skip to main content
It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

Smarter Searching: Going Beyond Google

Techniques for efficiently searching, identifying, and evaluating scholarly information.

PIRATE SEARCH: Searches dozens of Park Library databases simultaneously

Quick Search


If you're not sure where to start your research, Pirate Search may help you find search terms and identify useful databases.

Pirate Search

              Advanced Search

Building a Better Search

Identifying the major concepts and similar terms (synonyms) for your research topic...

Example topic: "The effects of media violence on children"

  Original Term   Synonym #1   Synonym #2
  Media OR Television OR Movies
AND Violence OR Aggression    
AND Children OR Youth OR Adolescents

 

...can help you construct a better search query, which yields better search results!

EBSCO Advanced Search screenshot

AND, OR, and Punctuation

These tips pertain to many library databases including the "Advanced Search" screen of Pirate Search.

Boolean Operators (AND / OR)

  AND OR
How it works: Search results contain both Term #1 and Term #2 Search results contain either Term #1 or Term #2 (or both)
Effects on search results: Narrows /
Fewer results
Broadens /
More results
Examples with diagrams:

Peas AND Carrots

Results = the middle area overlapped by both circles
AND diagram

Peas OR Carrots

Results = the entire area
of both circles
OR

 

Asterisks and Quotation Marks

Using an asterisk wildcard (*) at the end of a partial word will broaden search results by including multiple word endings.

When searching for a specific phrase (two or more words together), adding quotation marks around that phrase will typically narrow your search results.

For example:

  • Using child* will search for all variations of the word child, including children, children's, or childhood.
  • A search on "sexual strategies theory" -- with the quotation marks included -- will retrieve only those records containing these three words together in this exact order.
Park University Library
8700 NW River Park Drive, Box 61 - Parkville, MO - 64152
Phone: (816) 584-6285
Toll-free: (800) 270-4347
https://library.park.edu/smarter
library.park.edu
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-31
44170
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:GKJWAOGVCCQQMCYPFSDW3NP7D3JSS2SD
<urn:uuid:2ba2beb9-da5e-4aeb-b36a-7c1ce2ba2713>
2021-07-28T03:43:00Z
34.194.39.199
text/html
sha1:XHATP2XNNOUFR534LQ7NSVMDUW6AYG26
<urn:uuid:062a39f0-6c85-4a21-af29-2de1341b3e52>
https://library.park.edu/smarter
response
<urn:uuid:c74dde1a-7cd0-4a72-8c91-8e7c7e8ac66a>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-31
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for July/August 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-218.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-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/