APSC FYE: Search Strategy Builder

Search Strategy Builder

Search Strategy Builder

The Search Strategy Builder is a tool designed to teach you how to create a search string using Boolean logic. While it is not a database and is not designed to input a search, you should be able to cut and paste the results into the standard database search boxes.

Write out your research question or topic thesis as a sentence.

  Concept 1 and Concept 2 and Concept 3
Extract the major concepts from your sentence above and enter them here.    

List alternatives for each concept.

These can be synonyms, or they can be specific examples of the concept.

Use single words or short phrases.

Find additional terms in abstracts and summaries of the articles, books, and other sources you find during initial searches.

 Search terms Search terms Search terms

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Search Strategy Builder created by University of Arizona Libraries and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A few tips to use when searching

Boolean Operators
Databases use three primary operators to determine how you want your search to be run:

  • OR will find synonyms
    • cat OR feline
  • AND will combine ideas
    • cattle AND horses
  • NOT will exclude terms
    • mustangs NOT cars


Other tools

Truncation

  • Use the asterisks (*) at the end of a word to search for multiple variations, but be sure your word isn't too short (e.g. cat*) as you'll get things you weren't looking for (catastrophe, caterpillar, catatonic, etc). 

Phrase searching

  • Need to find a specific phrase?  Use quotation marks to indicate the words must be found in that order: 
    • "stock trailer"
    • "veterinary feed directive"

Nesting/order of operations

  • Make sure to tell the database exactly how you want your search interpreted by using parentheses to put your synonyms (OR) terms together.  For example:  
    • cattle OR cows OR bovine AND mastitis AND treatment
      • this search would include some records that had all three terms (bovine, mastitis, treatment) among the thousands of items that just had the word cattle, or the word cows in them. 
    • (cattle OR cows OR bovine) AND mastitis AND treatment
      • this search indicates that any one of the terms (cattle, cows, bovine) must be in the record, but it also has to include the term mastitis and the term treatment in order to be retrieved.