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Use different search techniques to retrieve the best possible results.
Truncation allows you to search for any extensions of a word.
| Truncated word | What the database will search for |
|---|---|
| communicat* | communicate, communication, communications, communicating, communicator, communicators |
| Australia* | Australia, Australian, Australians, Australia’s |
Wildcard symbols enable you to substitute a symbol for one letter of a word. They are particularly useful for words with multiple spellings, and differences in British and American spelling. The wildcard symbol is typically a question mark (?) or hashtag (#) symbol.
| Wildcard | What the database will search for |
|---|---|
| wom?n | women, woman |
| organi#ation | organisation, organization |
Enclose a phrase within quotation marks (" ") for example, "human rights" to find those words together and in that order. Use when order is important.
Each database has similar functions and searching techniques. The key to successful searching is:
Combining keywords with AND will give you results where both terms are present.
This will narrow your search as results must include all words.
For example, searching catholic AND teaching will return information that includes both the terms catholic and teaching.
The shaded area represents the results you get from searching catholic AND teaching.
Connecting your keywords with OR will give you results on at least one concept.
It will also include information with any combination of the keywords. This will broaden your search. This is useful to use with synonyms.
For example, searching justice OR equalit* OR fairness will return information on:
justice
equalit* (equalities, equalitarian)
fairness
The shaded areas (everything) represents the results you get from searching justice OR equalit* OR fairness.
Using NOT will exclude term/s from your results.
For example, searching teaching NOT teachers will exclude results that mention teachers. This will narrow your results.
The shaded area represents the results you get from searching teaching NOT teachers.
In addition to using AND, OR and NOT, you can conducts proximity searches for even greater control over your results.
Some searches use N to search for words that occur within a specified number of words (or fewer) of each other in results.
For example, to find catholic and teaching within three words of each other in any order, use catholic N3 teach*,which will retrieve:
Catholic teaching
Catholic moral teaching
Teaching in the Catholic school system
Catholic primary school teachers
Some of the below options will be available to limit/narrow your results:
Most databases allow you to save your searches. This means you can easily run them again to see what new articles have been added to the database.
You can also set up alerts, RSS feeds and export your citations to reference managers such as EndNote.
You can create a personal account within databases (this is separate to your ACU username and password) to: