Research Guides: Tips for Database Searching: Home

Home: Tips for Database Searching

The key to being a savvy online searcher is to use common search techniques that you can apply to almost any database, including article databases, online catalogs and even commercial search engines.

This is important because searching library databases is a bit different from searching Google.

The techniques described in this section will enable you to quickly retrieve relevant information from the thousands of records in a database.

When you search a database and do not get the results you expect, Ask a Librarian for advice. Library staff are happy to help you find what you need.

Please use the tabs above to browse the resources.

~ based on MIT Libraries' Database Search Tips guide

You may also want to consult our online workshop, Stop Searching, Start Finding, for more database tips.

Contents:

Boolean Operators
using AND, OR, and NOT
Truncation
using the * symbol
Keywords vs. Subjects
using your own words vs. a database's subject terms
Fields
searching by author, title, journal title, etc.
Phrases
using quotation marks to search for a string of words
Stop Words
some words that databases ignore: a, an, the, etc.

Online Workshop: Stop Searching, Start Finding

These video tutorials are designed to help you better understand the fundamentals of searching subscription databases effectively and efficiently so that you can do better research faster.

This is a part of the Research Toolkit workshop series. While we are not able to incorporate the same level of active learning that we do in the traditional workshops, these videos are designed to replicate the in-person workshop as closely as possible. The workshop has been divided into six parts. Each section is less than five minutes long and includes quizzes.