cats and dogs	And Narrows your search Retrieves citations containing BOTH cats AND dogs Usually used for unrelated terms
cats or felines	Or Broadens your search Retrieves citations conatining EITHER cats OR felines Usually used for synonyms
gypsy not moths	Not Narrows your search RETRIEVES items including gypsy DISCARDS items containing moths May eliminate relevant records Sometimes, Not is seen as And Not

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Nesting (Using parentheses to develop complex searches)

The search statement: (cats or felines or cat or feline) and leukemia
Retrieves items that have any of the terms in parentheses and also the term "leukemia."
The result is the all the records with the terms cat or cats or felines or feline that have the word leukemia

Read the "Help" of the specific database since truncation and wildcard symbols are not standardized.
Symbols that are commonly used include: *, ?

Truncation	"the process of cutting off or shortening a keyword." Truncation finds all suffixes or endings of a word.
Wildcards	replace 1 or 0 characters in a keyword search.

* (Asterisk) adolesc*	Truncation symbol in the Library Catalog--What We Own, EBSCOhost, and PubMed. Retrieves all the possible endings or suffixes of a root word. Finds the terms adolescence, adolescents, adolescent, etc.
? (Question mark) comput?	Truncation symbol in ProQuest databases. Used to replace one or more characters in a word. Retrieves the terms compute, computer, computers, computing, etc.
? (Question mark) wom?n	In EBSCOhost, the wildcard used to replace exactly one character. Retrieves the terms woman, women, womyn, etc.

Caution! Place your truncation symbols carefully.
The entry "cat*" will retrieve cats, catches, catatonic, catalog, catapult, cathedral, Catherine, catholic, etc.

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Searching by keyword allows the use of your own terms, Boolean operators, truncation and wildcards and nesting.
If you find too many records, try the following:

• Limit search using the Boolean Operator "and" and another search term.
• Find a relevant search term in the "Subject" area and do a subject search.
• Ask for help or call the General Reference Desk (3rd floor, 581-6273).

If you do not find enough information, try the following:

• Check for typing or spelling errors.
• Use a thesaurus to find synonyms or a dictionary to check spelling.¹
• Ask for help or call the General Reference Desk (3rd floor, 581-6273).
  
  ¹(Based on Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary).

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Updated 1/12/07, ceo