Library 101

When you need to search for information, it is tempting to start typing right away. Taking a few minutes to think about your search strategy can pay off in the long run, though. First, think of the concepts that you want to search. Suppose you are interested in finding articles on the effects of exercise on depression. Searching in a bibliographic database for “effects of exercise on depression” is not likely to get many useful results. That is because most databases default to phrase searching, meaning that they will look for that exact phrase. A better strategy would be to break this phrase down into concepts. The first concept is exercise. Another concept is depression. What about effects? Words like "effects" or "problems" are not good search terms because they are so ubiquitous. Instead think about what some of the effects might be. If you do not know, you can stick with just two concepts.

Next, you want to combine your concepts using Boolean operators. Boolean refers to a system of logic developed by mathematician George Boole, commonly used in algebra. There are three commands, or operators, used in this logic: AND, OR, and NOT. The operators tell the database how you want to combine your terms.

Your search strategy for this example might be “exercise AND depression" because you want your results to have both of those words. Maybe you are interested in the effects of a specific form of exercise, but it can be described in multiple ways. You might search for "(biking OR cycling) AND depression." Notice the parentheses - just like in algebra, they denote what action to perform first. This search strategy would retrieve articles that have either “biking” or “cycling,” but will all have “exercise.” On the other hand, maybe there is a specific exercise that you do not want to consider. In that case, you could search for "exercise AND depression NOT running." With this search strategy, you will retrieve articles that include the terms exercise and depression, but any articles containing the word running will be eliminated from the results. The table below shows these three search strategies and their corresponding results.

Next, you will want to determine where to search. Below is a list of selected databases available from the FNU Library. Medline is used most often, but depending on the topic, you may want to use others.

Most databases use subject headings for indexing and specialized searching. Subject headings are assigned to works in a catalog or database to describe the work. They are chosen by a cataloger or indexer from a list of preferred terms, or a controlled vocabulary (Reitz, 2007). This process standardizes the terminology that is used. For example, if the subject heading for works about teenagers is “adolescents,” then an article titled “Dealing with Your Teenager” will have the subject heading of adolescents, even though that term is not used in the article. Subject headings become an access point for the work, meaning that you can use them to search. If you search for the subject heading “adolescents,” you’ll retrieve articles about teenagers, adolescents, young people, juveniles, etc. In other words, using subject headings to search will enable you to search for a concept, not just words.

Subject headings are cross-referenced and organized hierarchically to show the relationship between terms. Since different databases deal with different content areas, the subject headings are not the same for every database. The group of subject headings may be named differently as well.

Phone books may not be commonly used anymore, but the organization of The Yellow Pages gives a good example of the use of subject headings. If you are looking for a doctor, when you go to that section, it tells you to instead look under physician (or another more specific type of doctor). These are the preferred terms for the concept. Sometimes the term that most everyone uses is not actually what the database uses.

A more current example of subject headings is the use of hashtags in social media. Searching with a hashtag will show all the posts that have used that hashtag, regardless of the actual text of the post.

To find a subject heading to search in an EBSCOhost database, look at the blue bar at the top of the screen.  The screenshot below shows the link for the MeSH Terms in MEDLINE.

If you are searching more than one database, the link will say "Subjects" but when you hover over the link you can choose which group of subject headings you'd like to use. Remember that subject headings are specific to each database.

View the video below for more specific instructions on searching with subject headings in MEDLINE via EBSCOhost, including explanations of preferred terms and scope notes. Subject headings are the preferred terms for any given concept in a database and a scope note defines the subject heading's intended use or "scope" in the database.

For a quick, general search, or when you don't know which database to use, you may want to use Discovery, the Library's single-search interface, which searches multiple databases for articles and eBooks.

Google Scholar is another resource for searching scholarly literature.

Tip:  You can connect FNU's Library to Google Scholar so that you'll get full-text links to articles that are available from the library. Watch the video below to find out how!

Reitz, J.M. (2007). ODLIS – Online dictionary for library and information science. http://www.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_A.aspx.