Title: Search Strategies
Course: Library - Library Sandbox > Section: Ontario Tech Library Online: Searching Omni for Books, Articles & More

At this point in the research process, you are moving from merely identifying main keywords, synonyms, and related terms to developing a search strategy. Below are some tips and tricks you can use for more precise searching.^1

Use Quotation Marks for Phrases

Put quotation marks around any phrases so that the phrase is what’s searched for, rather than the separate words. “Common cold” instead of common cold is a good example. Without these quotation marks, just think how many sources would come up that have nothing to do with having the sniffles. . . cold weather is common. . . cold war common tactics, etc.

Use OR | AND Operators to Combine Keywords

OR – If one of your keywords has several synonyms or related terms, use OR to combine them and to retrieve more results. For instance, if you are doing a search on the topic grief and child therapy you will want to search for grief but may also want to include synonyms for grief such as bereavement OR loss in your search.

OR

AND – If you have two or more keywords, you’ll want to use AND to combine them while searching to bring back results with both.  For example, if you are looking for information about grief and child therapy, you’ll want to include all three keywords: grief AND child AND therapy in your search.

Generally, the fewer keywords that you use while searching the broader your search will be and you will retrieve more results. It's always better to start your search with only a couple of keywords (2-3 max). After all, there is nothing worse than getting no results when you do a search!

AND

Use OR to join together all synonyms and related terms for each one of your keywords. Use AND to join any separate keywords together.

AND + OR

References

^1 Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries (n.d.). Choosing & using sources: A guide to academic research. The Ohio State University Pressbooks. Retrieved August 21, 2020, from https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/

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