Tips for finding vampires, zombies, and more...
You will get better results and are more likely to survive your search by learning a small set of search techniques that you can use over and over again.
Library databases and search engines can be used to find vampires and other creatures of interest to you. If you understand and use just the three techniques described here, you'll be an effective and efficient searcher, perhaps even a slayer.
The three (3) techniques:
1. AND, OR, and NOT are used to combine words to produce specific results.
With these "Boolean operators," you tell a library database how you want words combined to produce the results you want.
vampires AND house AND night
you will find items that have all 3 words (vampires, house, night).
If you do this search in the Library Catalog, you'll find the House of Night series of books by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. In an article database like Proquest Research Library, you will find articles about the House of the Night series.
vampires NOT fiction
you will find items that include the first word but not the second word.
A research database such as Academic Search Premier will find items with vampires, but if the word "fiction" appears in the description of the item, the item will not show up in the results.
In the Library Catalog, this search will find books or other media about vampires that do not include the word fiction, so it will eliminate novels and provide a set of items about vampires that includes, for example, analyses of vampires in literature or vampires in history, myth, or legend.
vampires OR zombies
you will find items that have either the word zombies OR the word vampires
-- for those occasions when you must deal with either one or the other.
2. Quotation marks can be used to control the proximity of vampires or zombies to other things
by forcing phrase searching.
For example, in the magazine and journal database called Academic Search Premier, a search for
"vampire love"
will only find items where the two words are side-by-side and in the order typed.
It's a valuable technique for finding phrases such as "zombie horde", "living dead", "flesh eaters", or "zombies in literature".
3. The asterisk (*) serves as a wildcard character to catch alternative word endings.
For example, to search for zombie, zombies, zombify, zombification, type:
zombi*
If you want to search for zombie or zombies, type:
zombie*
The database will find any word that begins with the letters that are in front of the asterisk.
Likewise, vampir* will find articles with the words vampire, vampires, and vampirism.
There you have them - the three techniques that will make you successful in the hunt: Boolean operators, quotation marks, and the asterisk.
Don't march with the zombie hordes who let the database control the search. Take control of your searches by speaking the language of the research databases. Make them do what YOU want them to do.
You will get better results and are more likely to survive your search by learning a small set of search techniques that you can use over and over again.
Library databases and search engines can be used to find vampires and other creatures of interest to you. If you understand and use just the three techniques described here, you'll be an effective and efficient searcher, perhaps even a slayer.
Image by John LeMasney, http://365sketches.org
The three (3) techniques:
1. AND, OR, and NOT are used to combine words to produce specific results.
With these "Boolean operators," you tell a library database how you want words combined to produce the results you want.
- AND
vampires AND house AND night
you will find items that have all 3 words (vampires, house, night).
If you do this search in the Library Catalog, you'll find the House of Night series of books by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. In an article database like Proquest Research Library, you will find articles about the House of the Night series.
- NOT
vampires NOT fiction
you will find items that include the first word but not the second word.
A research database such as Academic Search Premier will find items with vampires, but if the word "fiction" appears in the description of the item, the item will not show up in the results.
In the Library Catalog, this search will find books or other media about vampires that do not include the word fiction, so it will eliminate novels and provide a set of items about vampires that includes, for example, analyses of vampires in literature or vampires in history, myth, or legend.
- OR
vampires OR zombies
you will find items that have either the word zombies OR the word vampires
-- for those occasions when you must deal with either one or the other.
2. Quotation marks can be used to control the proximity of vampires or zombies to other things
by forcing phrase searching.
For example, in the magazine and journal database called Academic Search Premier, a search for
"vampire love"
will only find items where the two words are side-by-side and in the order typed.
It's a valuable technique for finding phrases such as "zombie horde", "living dead", "flesh eaters", or "zombies in literature".
3. The asterisk (*) serves as a wildcard character to catch alternative word endings.
For example, to search for zombie, zombies, zombify, zombification, type:
zombi*
If you want to search for zombie or zombies, type:
zombie*
The database will find any word that begins with the letters that are in front of the asterisk.
Likewise, vampir* will find articles with the words vampire, vampires, and vampirism.
There you have them - the three techniques that will make you successful in the hunt: Boolean operators, quotation marks, and the asterisk.
Don't march with the zombie hordes who let the database control the search. Take control of your searches by speaking the language of the research databases. Make them do what YOU want them to do.
Image by John LeMasney, http://365sketches.org
