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John B. Coleman Library Ask A Librarian

ENGL 1301: Freshman Composition I: Spring 2025: Search Strategy

Create a Search Strategy

  • Define your Research Question
    • Do stringent immigration policies benefit the United States?
  • Determine keywords from the research question
    • Immigration
    • Policy
  • Consider synonyms and alternative keywords and phrases
    • Immigration
      • migration
      • relocation
      • refugees
    • Policy
      • Help
      • Aid
      • Assistance
      • Support
  • Try combining search terms using Boolean Operators
    • Immigration AND Policy
    • (Immigration OR Refugee) AND Policy

Boolean Operators

  • AND
    • Use to narrow search results
    • All search terms linked by AND must be in the results
  • OR
    • Use to broaden search results
    • Connects two or more similar concepts
  • NOT
    • Narrows search results
    • Ignores concepts that may be implied by search results
    • x NOT y
  • Use parentheses to group search terms together
    • (x AND y) or (a AND b)

Truncation and Wildcards

Allows searching that uses symbols to replace the letters in words. It allows the database to search for alternatives to you term. 

Truncation allows you to search for all the variations of a word. 

  • ancest* would bring back ancestor or ancestry

Wildcard allows you to search for alternative spellings of a word or multiple possible characters.

  • wom#n will search woman or women

Different databases will use different symbols for truncation and wildcard. Check out the help tab to determine what symbol is used. 

John B. Coleman Library
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 519, MS 1040, Prairie View, Texas 77446
Physical Address: L.W. Minor St. / University Drive, Prairie View, Texas 77446
Reference: (936) 261-1535, Circulation: (936) 261-1542
Email: askalibrarian@pvamu.edu

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