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W.B. Ray IB High School

This guide was created to help student visitors to Bell Library navigate library resources and make the most of their time in the library.

Getting Started!

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EASY AS 1, 2, 3....

Step 1 - Identify keywords.

Step 2 - Add Boolean operators & modifiers.

Step 3 - Repeat until you get the results you want.

Just know....

You might need to change your topic slightly or change your keywords depending, and it's going to be a repetitive process! But that's ok!

What's a keyword?

It's really important to distill your topic down into searchable keywords. You might need to change your keyword language or spelling, or use specific symbols or connecting words to combine keywords to get the best results.

BOOLEAN OPERATORS 

The three words that you can use to combine your search keywords most efficiently are: and, or, and not. Take a look at the image below to get a sense of how they work. 

  • AND tends to narrow searches because all words must be included in results.
  • OR tends to broaden searches because one or other terms (or all) can be present in results.
  • NOT selectively eliminates any results containing a specified word.

This image illustrates the effects of different boolean search operator examples: typing coffee and beans as keywords shows content with both words included, typing in party or celebration shows content with either word or both included, and typing in royal not caribbean will show content with the word royal but exclude content with the word caribbean in search results. Additionally three symbols are highlighted: using quotation marks to type in a search phrase like a book title will show results that contain that exact phrase, using parentheses to enclose a phrase works similarly to mathematics and the search engine will perform the boolean search surrounded by parentheses first; and lastly typing in part of a word and adding an asterisk will return all possible spelling variations in your search results.

Always Double Check Generated Citations!

Most databases, Quick Search, and Google Scholar have citation generators. That being said, they are never 100% correct, so you will want to double check using your assigned style manual or a reliable online site.

Selected reliable online sites for citations are:

Citation Generators in Databases & Google Scholar

Typically Citation buttons look like stylized quote marks, but sometimes they are links labeled Cite. Here are some examples:

A database:

Quick Search:

Google Scholar: