Tips for Better Database Searching

Library

Your objective in using any of the library databases will probably be to locate relevant information, primarily journal articles and preferably in full text. To achieve your objective it is best to develop an effective search strategy before starting to search.

Define Keywords

The first step in developing a search strategy is to analyse the question to determine the keywords or phrases. These are the terms which describe the topic or subject of your search as briefly and accurately as possible. Descriptions made up of one or two words are ideal. These content words or keywords will be used as search terms.

For the topic: "Discuss the health effects of mobile phones on teenagers", key words might be: health and mobile phones.

Direction Words

As well as keywords, a question may contain direction words which tell you how to deal with the topic, for example, analyse, discuss, compare, describe, evaluate, etc. These words would rarely be used as search terms, but should be kept in mind when you are browsing the results list to determine which items are relevant to your topic.

In the topic: "Discuss the health effects of mobile phones on teenagers", the direction word is discuss.

Limit Words

Limit words provide boundaries for your search. Depending on what they are, limit words may or may not be used as search terms. For instance, limit words may be:

• geographical - your local area, Australia, Europe, etc.
• specific to a time period -  in the year 2000, since 1980, for the past 10 years, etc.
• specific to a certain age group - children, elderly, etc.
• numerical - discuss two perspectives
• prioritised - determine the most important issue

Limit words may be used as search terms to limit the results of a keyword search. For instance, a keyword search may be limited by the name of a country, the date of publication or an age group.

Less descriptive terms, such as 'important' or 'two perspectives', would not be used as search terms. They would, however, be kept in mind when selecting appropriate items from the results of the search. 

In the example "Discuss the health effects of mobile phones on teenagers", the limiting word is teenagers.

Linking Search Terms

Search terms may be built into a logical structure by using the links AND, OR, and NOT. These links are called Boolean operators.

Complex Searches

Better results are obtained when performing a complex search by doing it in smaller stages.

For the topic "Discuss the health effects of mobile phones on teenagers." A search strategy for locating information to answer this question might be:

Search 1     health AND mobile phones
Search 2     teenagers OR adolescents
Search 3     combine Search 1 AND Search 2

Too Much Information

If your search results in too much information try to:

• limit the results to full text only
• look at the latest information only
• focus the keywords to obtain information that is primarily on that topic

Different database providers offer various options for achieving this goal. For instance, in OVID, it is possible to limit the search to thesaurus terms (i.e. subject terms from a 'controlled' vocabulary). It is also possible to 'focus' the term. This means the search results will show only those items that have a particular thesaurus term as a major subject heading.

Not Enough Information

If your search results in too little information you can:

• consider using alternative keywords, e.g. cell phones OR mobile phones;
• check that you are using a database with an appropriate subject coverage;
• perform the search on alternative databases, e.g. if using Ebsco Megafile Premier (multidisciplinary), perform the same search using another multidisciplinary database such as Academic Onefile;
• if the more specific databases yield poor results, try the more general databases, such as Ebsco Megafile Premier or Informit Complete or Academic Onefile.