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Search Basics
- Think critically about what kinds of contents different databases include, and adapt your search terms accordingly
- When using a given academic database, do a test search, open a record and see what descriptive language (metadata), the catalogers and indexers use to organize information. Adjust your terms accordingly.
- Use "" to search a complete, unbroken phrase, e.g. "Puerto Rico," "Dominican Republic," "La Llorona"
- In many databases, you can use * to stand in for the multiple possible endings of a word, e.g. "Puerto Ric*" would search Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans; monst* would search monster, monsters, monstrous, monstrosity...
- Use Boolean operators like AND and OR to build a search. E.g. (chupacabra OR chupacabras) AND ("Puerto Rico" OR Chile)
- Languages: most academic databases have filters by language if you want to exclude or include results in English vs Spanish vs Portuguese, etc. Remember that databases run out of the U.S. will have metadata in English, even if the text itself is in another language.
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