Haiti, Then and Now (FREN 164A)  

• Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"health care"

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

"health care"

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

records that include the word "health" and the word "care" but not the phrase "health care"

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

• Begin with a keyword search of your topic. For example, searching the RILM music database:

haiti and african

Note the related subject headings that come up in relevant results:

African music (outside Africa)

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

haiti* will search for

Haiti, Haitian, and Haitians

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 a search by including related terms, synonyms, or variant spellings in an "or" search:

ex. healthcare or "health care"

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