GALILEO@UGA Subject Guides: SOWK 7118: PrOSEAD: How to Search

Display of Opening hours
Hours
Main Library	7:30am – 2:00am
Circulation Desk	7:30am – 2:00am
Digital Humanities Lab	7:30am – 2:00am
Interlibrary Loan Office	8:00am – 5:00pm
Reference Desk	9:00am – 10:00pm

Hours

Main Library

7:30am – 2:00am

Circulation Desk

7:30am – 2:00am

Digital Humanities Lab

7:30am – 2:00am

Interlibrary Loan Office

8:00am – 5:00pm

Reference Desk

9:00am – 10:00pm

Identifying Keywords

The keywords you use can have a profound impact on the results of your research. Using the “right” words will speed up the research process, while the “wrong” words can bring to it to a halt.

Before you can begin searching for information, you need to identify keywords related to your topic. Key terminology can be easily be found by scanning:

Your research questions
Background information from reference sources
The text of any books and articles you've already found. (Do they describe the idea you're looking for in a different, specialized way?)

AND, OR, & NOT

Use AND, OR, and NOT to connect your keywords and tell the database exactly how you want it to search for your terms. These terms help you combine or exclude words in your search for more relevant results.

Operator	Examples	Results
AND	cross-cultural AND communication "social work" AND therapy	Results contain ALL of the search terms.
OR	psychotherapy OR counseling "Affordable Care Act" OR Obamacare	Results contain ANY of the search terms, but not necessarily all of them.
NOT	java NOT coffee Clinton NOT Bill	Excludes results containing the second search term.

Truncation & Phrase Searching

Truncation or wildcard symbols allow you to look for variations of words. They often broaden your search results.

Example: searching on sport* would bring up variations such as sport, sports, sporting, sporty, etc.

Note: The truncation symbol is usually an asterisk (*) but can vary by database. Consult the database’s “help” or “search tips” pages for details.

Use quotation marks for phrase searching, i.e. "University of Georgia"

Note: searching "social work" tells the database to look for these words in this exact order - this phrase, instead of finding social in one sentence and work in another.

Search Strategy Builder

This tool is designed to teach you how to create a search string using Boolean logic. Cut and paste the search string results into the search box of a library database or search engine.