Introduction to Latin American Literature (HISP 111B)  

• Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"magical realism"

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

"magical realism"

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

records that include the word "magical" and the word "realism" but not the phrase "magical realism"

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

• Begin with a keyword search of your topic:

argentina and "dirty war"

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

Human rights--Argentina; State-sponsored terrorism--Argentina; Disappeared persons--Argentina 

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

feminis* will search for

feminism and feminist

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 revise your search, including your related term in an "or" search with the first term:

ex. jew* (for jew, jews or jewish) or judai* (for judaic or judaism)

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 argentina and "dirty war" but find that the database lists "Argentina--History--Dirty War, 1976-1983" as a subject heading. By searching for "Argentina--History--Dirty War, 1976-1983" as a subject in this particular database, you ensure that every one of your results treats the Argentine "Dirty War" as a subject.

If you search for the keywords argentina and "dirty war" in this database, you might find records among your results where the Argentine "Dirty War" is mentioned but 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.