EBC Resources: Sample Searches

Before plugging in search terms, it can be a good idea to brainstorm some synonyms for the terms you plan to use.  For example, imagine you are researching executive coaching for human resources professionals. Try jotting down a few alternative ways to describe each of your terms.  These might be synonyms or even related terms/concepts:

Executive Coaching                                       Human Resources​                          

 coaching                                                                       HR                   

mentoring                                                          employee development

Thinking of additional terms before-hand will let you find more results which are still relevant to your topic. You can always discover additional search language by looking at the keywords and subject headings used to describe the articles you find most useful.

You will usually want to use the 'Advanced Search' page (databases and FASTsearch have advanced search features). The advanced page will give you more control over your search, increasing your chances of finding relevant results. 

You can either use the pre-built structure in the database to enter your terms, or you can enter them all on one line.  We'll show an example of each. Keep the terms you brainstormed in mind, we'll look at how to use those soon. 

Pre-Built Structure

This strategy is particularly useful if you want to specify different search fields (i.e. author, title, abstract, etc.) for your terms. It's also useful if you like using the line-by-line structure to help you stay organized:

Single Line

You can use this strategy if you're looking for all of your terms in the same field. When you start to use more advanced techniques, searching in a single line becomes a bit like building a math equation. Some researchers enjoy this strategy while others will prefer using set structures. 

Most databases, including FASTsearch, will provide options to narrow your results on the left side of the screen. Some of the most common ways to filter results are to limit to a certain content type (such as scholarly journals) or to limit to a certain date range (such as articles published in the last five years):

There are also more advanced filtering options. You may want to spend a little time getting familiar with these other filters and seeing how they can improve your results. Of particular note is the 'Subject' filter.  If you click on the link to 'more options' you can select multiple items from the lists to include or exclude in your search, which is a quick way to target those items most relevant to your research:

You may have noticed that we enclosed the term "human resources" in quotation marks in our sample search.  This is one of many quick search tips, called 'phrase searching', which can dramatically alter the results you find. This is a brief run-down of a few other tips, but we would recommend checking out either our Quick Tip Videos blog page or our Library Research Methods guide for full details. 

Phrase Searching

Enclose multi-word search terms in quotation marks to find exact phrases. Example: "human resources".  If you do not enclose phrases in quotes, the database simply assumes you are looking for both terms, but it does not know you wish to find them together in a certain order.

Truncation

Use an asterisk at the end of a root word to find multiple endings. You will place the asterisk at the point at which you may start seeing variation. For example: coach*.  This search would return results such as: coach, coaches, coaching.

Proximity Search

Find terms physically near each other in a record without specifying their order. Different databases use different syntax so check their help features. In ProQuest, you build a proximity search by connecting your terms with a capital 'N', a forward slash, and then a number representing how close together you want to find the terms. 

For example: coach* N/3 employees

This search specifies that I would like to find a version of the word 'coach' within three words (or less) of the term 'employee'.  Some sample results from this search include things like:

• ...the relationship between a coach and an employee....
• ...use employees to coach other employees...
• ...the manager-as-coach then helped the employee...

***It's important to remember that this search function only specifies how close you find the words, but not the context. It will be highly useful for some searches and may not be helpful for others, so you will only want to use it in some cases.

Nesting

Remember those synonyms we brainstormed earlier? Nesting is a strategy that will allow you to search for multiple synonyms in one go so you don't have to run as many searches. To nest terms, you will enclose them in parentheses and separate them using the operator 'OR'. 

For example: ("human resources" OR HR OR "employee development")

The database knows that it can find any one of those terms to bring back a match. 

**Note, you will almost always nest terms and add in additional keywords.  You can see this in the image below: