Library Research: Understanding Library Databases: Database Search Tips

This section of the tutorial will introduce you to skills and techniques you need to successfully find articles in research databases. 

​Keywords are search terms that you enter into the database to describe the topic of items that you want to retrieve.​ ​The database will word-match your keywords against the text of the article, and deliver results that match what you enter.

​You can tell the database how to look for those words by applying limiters. Limiters allow you to search for specific date of publication, material type(journal, newspaper, magazine, etc.), full-text, peer-reviewed articles, publication by name.  

​The benefit of keyword searching is precision. You can develop focused, precise searches in a library database, and get exactly what you need. It will require a little practice to become an expert searcher.

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​Databases can only word-match as it looks for the exact words and phrases you type in. This means you must:

• ​Break your topic into individual keywords
• ​Brainstorm the words an author might use
• ​Avoid phrases unless your phrase happens to match the article exactly, the database won't retrieve it

​There are 4 Steps in Building a Keyword Search Strategy:

1. Define your topic
2. Pick keywords
3. Choose Database
4. ​Connect your keywords with Boolean Operators

After your initial search in a database, you may want to narrow and/or limit your results. Many databases allow you to limit your results to scholarly or peer-reviewed journals and also to limit by date range, subject, publication type, etc.