Comparing Literatures: Theory and Practice (COML 100a)  

• Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"narrative theory"

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

"narrative theory"

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

records that include the word "narrative" and the word "theory" but not the phrase "narrative theory"

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

• Begin with a keyword search of your topic:

wordsworth and criticism

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

Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850 -- Criticism and interpretation  

Romanticism -- Great Britain 

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

narrat* will search for

narrate, narrative, or narratology

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 connect related terms with an "or" to broaden your search:

ex. women or female 

The database searches for records containing either "women" or "female" or both (but both are not required). OR broadens a search, resulting in more hits.