Art and Memory (USEM 37B) 

• Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"slave ship"

This ensures that the database will return results that include the entire phrase

"slave ship"

rather than records that contain both of these words, but not your search phrase:

records that include the word "slave" and the word "ship" but not the phrase "slave ship"

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

• Begin with a keyword search of your topic:

matisse

and note the related subject headings that come up in relevant results:

Matisse, Henri, 1869-1954.

• To search for more than one variant of a term, use truncation:

memorial* will search for

memorial, memorials, memorialize and memorializes

The database searches for any word that begins with the letters that precede the truncation symbol (in this case, an asterisk). Some databases use other symbols, such as a question mark, for truncation.

• You can also expand your search by including a related term in an "or" search with your first term:

ex. color or colour

See the box on Boolean Logic for more about this search technique.

• If the database you are searching allows you to specify a search field (i.e. keyword, subject, author, title etc.), then you can search these fields as long as you know that the term you're using appears in that index.

For example, you might begin with a keyword search for matisse but find that the database lists "Matisse, Henri, 1869-1954." as a subject heading. By searching for "Matisse, Henri , 1869-1954" as a subject in this particular database, you ensure that every one of your results treats Matisse as a subject.

If you search for the keyword matisse in this database, you might find records among your results where Matisse is mentioned but Matisse is not the main topic of the article or book. Sometimes you may want to look at these records too, so consider keyword searching in addition to searching the subject or other index fields.