Advices to search for information
Searching strategies
At the Library we provide you with access to different specialised information sources such as catalogues, databases, information portals, journals and electronic books. In these sources, the information is set out in different fields: author, title of the document, title of the journal, source, descriptions, materials, key words, summary and so on.
When you look for information, remember that you search for words and that the machines only read these words rather than interpreting them. For this same reason it is important that you think about the most suitable key words and their possible synonyms and that you run searches in various different languages. The more words you enter, the fewer results you will obtain.
A good strategy is to enter one or two words and then if too many results appear, enter more terms to make the search more specific.
Most information sources have a field called “Any area” or “Search the entire records”. This will allow you to search all fields at the same time. We recommend that you start your search in this manner, because this will provide you with a broad range of results which you can then reduce by using other fields or combining several fields.
These tools have advanced search features and help sections which can be very useful.
There are several strategies which will help you to run more effective searches: truncation, using boolean operators and using proximity operators.
Truncation
Truncation involves substituting one of more letters of a word for a symbol, enabling you to locate a term and its possible variants.
The most commonly-used symbols are the asterisk * and the question mark ?
To find out which one to use, check the help section of the search tool that you are using.
In Spanish, educa* will yield educación, educador, educativo
niñ? will yield niño, niños, niña, niñez, niñera
col?r will yield color, colar
Using boolean operators
Boolean operators allow you to combine various different terms within the one search and to expand or reduce search results. There are three boolean operators:
- Y/AND searches for results that contain all of the words indicated:
This is used for reducing the results of a search and making these more specific.
In Spanish: Gehry Y museo
- O/OR searches for results containing at least one of the words specified:
This is used to broaden the results of a search and make it more general:
In Spanish: museo O galeria
- NO/NOT excludes the words specified from the search.
This is used to reduce the number of results. Use this carefully to avoid missing relevant results:
In Spanish: Guggenheim NO New York
Use proximity operators
Most specialised search engines enable you to look for an exact sequence of words, or rather a set of words in the same order in which they are entered, and as they appear in writing. This option is generally identified using the term “phrase”.
The most common proximity operators are:
- NEAR searches for documents in which the specified terms appear near to one another and in the correct order. You can usually specify the number of words that appear between the specified terms.
In Spanish: contaminación NEAR ambiente
This will yield contaminación del ambiente, contaminación del medio ambiente, contaminación y polución del ambiente…
- Quotation marks “_” This will search for the expression specified within the quotation marks in the same way in which it had been written.
In Spanish, “contaminación medioambiental” yield documents in which that exact phrase only appears. Phrases such as contaminación ambiental, contaminación del medio ambiente o contaminación medio ambiental and so on will not appear.
Remember that some search engines do not need you to enter quotation marks when searching for expressions or phrases. To find out which type of proximity operator to use, check the help section of the search tool that you are using.