Lesson 2: Developing Search Strategies

Understanding how to construct a variety of search strategies can inform and make more efficient the selection of the proper search tools. Having learned in Standard 2 Lesson One several methods for finding information, this lesson describes some strategies for discovering relevant information.

For ease of reading and comprehension, this lesson is divided into five (5) parts:

Part A: Tips for Finding Known Items

• Author Names
• Journal Titles
• Journal Articles

Part B: Finding Unknown Items: Keyword Searching Strategies, including:

• Truncation and Wildcard Characters
• Boolean Searching
  • AND
  • OR
  • NOT

Part C: Finding Unknown Items: Subject Searching and Controlled Vocabulary, including:

• Subject Headings
• Other Ways to Discover Subject Headings
• Using Controlled Vocabulary in Databases
  • Expanding to Find Broader, Narrower, and Related Terms

Part D: Next Steps in Information Discovery, including:

• Search Limits
• Refining Searches
• Combining and Saving Search Strategies
• Citation Tracking and Finding Related Records

Part E: WWW Information

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