Advanced Searching Techniques

Advanced Searching Techniques

What is a search strategy?
Where do I begin?
Finding the focus
Identifying and defining key concepts
Finding alternative terms
Where should I start looking?

How to find journal articles using ABI/Inform Global
Boolean Operators
Proximity or Adjacency Operators
Truncation
Searching Fields
Article Type
Thesaurus

How can I improve my results?
Building on what you've found
Other Full-Text Databases
Critical Evaluation of Sources
Summary
If you need further help

What is a search strategy?

When you design a search strategy you are planning how you will look for information. The more care and thought you put into your search strategy, the more relevant your search results will be.

A well designed search strategy:

saves you time in the long run
allows you to search for information in many different places
helps you to find a larger amount of relevant information

Where do I begin?

The first step is to think about what information you need to answer your question. This seems obvious, and to a certain extent you are probably already doing it. But a more systematic approach will reward you.

You should think about:

finding the focus of your question
what the key concepts are
your understanding of these concepts
alternative terms to describe these concepts
where you should start looking
building on what you've found

Finding the focus

To find relevant information you need to focus on what is being asked. Think about what you need to find by asking questions about your topic.

For example, to find out about How has the United States' relationship with Japan changed since 1945?, some relevant questions might be:

What are the element(s) of the relationship? Business, political, popular opinion, military, legal, trade?
What was the state of the relationship in 1945? What is it now?
Has the relationship been affected by other countries?

You may need to consult some background material, such as encyclopedias or general works to help you. Your answers may depend on the context in which the question is being asked (e.g. are you studying Business or History?).

Identifying and defining key concepts

Try breaking down your question into its key parts or concepts. This will be especially helpful if you are searching in the library catalogue or other databases. It is important that you understand what you are looking for, and in what context terms are used. English can be a very tricky language, and an imprecise use of words can lead to irrelevant results.

To find out the meaning of words, try dictionaries.

For background information about a specific concept, try encyclopedias.

Finding alternative terms

To increase the likelihood of finding relevant material, you need to think about alternative terms that can be used to describe the same concepts.

You should think about:

synonyms (e.g. mobile telephones, cellular telephones)
plural/singular forms (e.g. women, woman)
spelling variations(e.g. behaviour, behavior)
variations of a root word (e.g. feminism, feminist, feminine)
acronyms (e.g. chief executive officer, CEO)

Many books, journals, webpages and databases are produced in the United States and therefore favour North American spelling and terminology, so include these in your alternative expressions, if appropriate.

Sometimes using a thesaurus or specialised dictionary might help, particularly if you aren't clear about some terminology or concepts. Here are some alternatives for the concepts in the question How has the United States' relationship with Japan changed since 1945?.

Concept	Alternatives
United States'	United States U.S. Americans America
relationship	relations
Japan	Japan Japanese

Where should I start looking?

Once you know what you are searching for, you need to know where to search. Think about where you might look for the sort of information that you need.

Type of information Sources Where to look

Current or up-to-date information Journals, WWW Databases and Indexes, Search engines and Gateways

Comprehensive or in-depth information Books Library catalogue, browsing the shelves

Background information Books, encyclopedias Library catalogue

How to find journal articles using ABI/Inform Global
On the Foster Business Library homepage, ABI/Inform Global is listed under Business Databases; it is also included under the category Articles: Full Text. This business database indexes and abstracts over 1,500 management and business periodicals, most of them with full text, including Advertising Age, Adweek, Asian Business, The Banker, Business Week, The Economist, Forbes, and Fortune.

Subjects covered include marketing, international business, management, accounting, finance, human resources, etc. (U.W. restricted) (Also available, as ProQuest, to cardholders via the King County Library System, Pierce County Library System, Seattle Public Library, and Sno-Isle Regional Library System).

Boolean Operators
Boolean, proximity, and adjacency operators are used to broaden and narrow your search. To combine search terms, use Boolean operators:

AND, OR, AND NOT

reengineering AND management (Use this operator to search for documents where you'd like both terms to appear, narrowing a search. Retrieves 390 hits)
reengineering OR management (Use this operator to include synonyms, particularly where there are several terms or names used for a topic, or you would like to broaden a search. Retrieves over 10,000 hits)
reengineering AND NOT management (Use this operator to exclude one of the terms, particularly when your search terms have more than one meaning, such as blues and depression. Retrieves 327 hits)

Special Note: these Boolean operators are often presented as options like "include all the words," (AND operator) "include any of the words," (OR operator) and "exclude" (NOT operator).

Proximity or Adjacency Operators

Also Boolean Operators, proximity or adjacency operators, such as PRE or WITHIN, are used to control how closely the terms occur in the web document that is retrieved. For example, W/3 means that the terms must occur within 3 words of each other. Proximity operators ensure that your terms are more closely related to another. Examples of usage:

Operator: WITHIN
Explanation: These words separated by n or less by a specified distance in any order
Example: computer W/3 careers
Operator: NOT WITHIN
Explanation: Match all words but this one within a field
Example: computer NOT W/2 careers
Operator: PRE
Explanation: Match these words within n words in a field and in this order
Example: world pre/3 web
Operator: WITHIN DOC
Explanation: Match these words within either the indexing or the text
Example: internet W/DOC education

Truncation

The symbol "*" is used to replace any single character, either inside the word or at the right end of the word. Note: The "*" cannot be used to begin a word.

Examples: Wom*n finds "woman," "women;" "T*re" finds "tare," "tire," "tyre," etc.

The symbol "?" is used as a right-handed truncator only; it will find all forms of a word.

Example: Reengineeing? finds "reengineer," "reengineers," and "reengineering," etc.

Searching Fields

Databases are collections of records organized in a similar manner; simply put, this means they are divided into fields that contain the same information in each record. If data is entered into a separate field you can retrieve it using its field label. This means that if you want to search by title, the search engine looks in a special title index (or searches notations that indicate that the term occurs in the title field) where it has collected data from the field with the label title. Field searching is so wonderful because you can specify where to look in the electronic document; for example, in the title only, or the author fields. Field searching allows you to be very specific about where you want you terms to occur and can be a very powerful tool.

Performing a Basic Search will retrieve articles that have the keyword(s) appearing in one or more of the following fields:

You can search specific fields by clicking on Search Methods at the top of the screen in ABI/Inform Global, and then selecting Guided.

Article Type

By performing a Guided Search, you can use the article type field to look for search words or phrases in articles of a certain type. The article types you can enter in this field are as follows:

commentary
corrections
cover story
editorial
editorial cartoon
feature
fiction
general information
instructional
interview
letter
news
obituary
poetry
recipe
review
speech
statistics

Reviews provide critical evaluations of creative works, products, and restaurants. They can be divided into the following categories:

arts/exhibits review
audio review
book review
movie review
performance review
product review
restaurant review
television review
video review

In addition, all review categories can be further divided by the reviewer's opinion:

comparative (more than one item reviewed in the article)
favorable
mixed
no opinion
unfavorable

Thesaurus

Are your keywords not retrieving any relevant articles? Then try the thesaurus which is located under the Search Guide, located in the upper right-hand corner.

How can I improve my results?

Your initial searches might find not enough, or too much information. Solution? Review your search terms, and either broaden or narrow your search.

To broaden your search (i.e. increase the amount you find) you can:

Reduce the number of concepts you are using
Use the Boolean operator "OR" search
Look for alternative terms
Use more general search terms
Use subject headings as search terms
Make sure you have used any Boolean operators correctly
Use truncation to get variations on your term, or use alternate spellings

To narrow your search (i.e. reduce the amount you find) you can:

Use Boolean operators such as AND or NOT search
Look for more specific alternative terms
Use subject headings as search terms
Make sure you have used any Boolean operators correctly
Use more precise terms
Remove any truncation

Building on what you've found

Whenever you find a record that seems relevant, or an information source that is useful, you should use it as an introduction to other information. In the library, books are shelved together in subject areas. This means that if you find one useful book on the shelves, there will probably be others nearby.

The UW's Library Catalogue and database records have subject headings or descriptors attached to them. If you search again using these terms, you will find other records on similar topics.

Most academic books and journal articles contain references and bibliographies, which identify where the author obtained their information. You can use these references to find other information .

Be as specific as possible about what you are looking for
Become familiar with the phrases and concepts by using dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias.
Divide your question into concepts for searching
Think about and look for alternative search terms
Review your strategy and your results
Use what you've found to find more information

Some information adapted from:
Monash University Library's Virtual Librarian. How to Develop a Search Strategy. Revised 15 November 2000.
<http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/vl/sstrat/sstrprin.htm>. Accessed 28 March 2002.

If you need further help

The Foster Business Library Reference Desk is staffed nearly all of the hours that the library is open. The staff at the desk will be happy to help you find business research tools and resources, exploit business databases to the fullest or advise on research strategies.
For e-mail questions, direct your query to balib@u.washington.edu. For assistance by telephone, dial (206) 543-8012 during library hours.

See also the Foster Business Library's Business & Economics FAQ, and, in particular, the section for Business Databases.

For research guides on a wide variety of industries, products, companies, issues and topics, see the Team Librarian Consultation archives.

1 April 2002; updated 14 September 2006. Ronica L. Kieft, Reference Librarian, at rlkieft@u.washington.edu.