Use quotation marks to tell your search engine that those words must be found in that exact order.
Quotations can be powerful when used thoughtfully, but they can also backfire. Remember, our searches are only successful if the words or phrases we're using in our search exist in a book or article record. Even though you might be looking for resources about the "moral positionality of outdoor cat ownership among environmental activists," that phrase is far too specific and too exact to give you any results. Break it out into the basic concepts, reserving quotes for phrases that are two words that only make sense when used together in a specific order. In this case, "cat ownership" and "environmental activists" are your best bets.
When you have a word with many different endings, remove all the changing parts and replace them with an asterisk (*). That will tell your search engine to pull results that include every variation of that word.
After completing way too many years of higher ed studies, this was the one piece of information i wish someone told me eight years earlier.
Library Search: Everything - It can be used to find film, music, books,chapters, even articles. It will give you a lot (but certainly not all) of the materials the library as purchased or licensed. Things to remember:
Library Search: Library Catalog - This can be used to find film, music, books, and journals. Library catalog is not able to provide the same level of granularity as Everything, but it can be helpful to use when you are intentionally looking for a book or film rather than than chapters in a book or journal articles.
In additional to library search, there are a few really good interdisciplinary databases that you can use to find articles that may not appear in Library Search. These include:
To find even more articles, visit our list of Subject Guides (they look like this course guide) and select the most appropriate subject. Once there, you'll find a wealth of related resources including subject-specific databases.
