The Advanced Search Screen with Guided-Style fields offers keyword searching, search history and limiters to help you focus your search. Some databases provide a suggest subject terms feature, which you can access by clicking on the Thesaurus or Descriptors button. If you are searching multiple databases, special limiters may be available .
To create an Advanced Search :
In the first Find field, enter a keyword: Hemingway. Choose in Title.
In the second Find field enter a keyword phrase: Short Stories. Choose in Title.
When you select in Title you are asking the database to retrieve ONLY the entries with your keyword in the TITLE of the article.
Automatically "And" search terms – expands results by applying the AND operator between terms, e.g., typing space shuttle would give results for space and shuttle .
Click SEARCH. A result list is displayed.
"Hemingway" and "short stories" appear in the title of each entry. Each entry appeared in a scholarly(peer-reviewed) journal and is available in full text.
And - combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, education and technology finds articles that contain both terms .
Or - combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, education or technology finds results that contain either term .
Not - excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, education not technology finds results that contain the term education but not the term technology .
Use the wildcard and truncation symbols to create searches where there are unknown characters, multiple spellings or various endings. Neither the wildcard nor the truncation symbol can be used as the first character in a search term.
The wildcard is represented by a question mark ( ? ). To use the wildcard, enter your search terms and replace each unknown character with a ? . EBSCO host finds all citations of that word with the ? replaced by a letter.
For example, type ne?t to find all citations containing neat , nest or next . EBSCO host does not find net because the wildcard replaces a single character.
Truncation is represented by an asterisk ( * ). To use truncation, enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an * . EBSCO host finds all forms of that
word.
For example, type comput* to find the words computer or computing .
You can use a proximity search to search for two or more words that occur within a specified number of words (or fewer) of each other in the databases. Proximity searching is used with a keyword or Boolean search.
The proximity operators are composed of a letter ( N or W ) and a number (to specify the number of words). The proximity operator is placed between the words that are to be searched, as follows:
Near Operator ( N ) - N5 finds the words if they are within five words of one another regardless of the order in which they appear.
For example, type tax N5 reform to find results that would match tax reform as well as reform of income tax .
Within Operator ( W ) - In the following example, W8 finds the words if they are within eight words of one another and in the order in which you entered them .
For example, type tax W8 reform to find results that would match tax reform but would not match reform of income tax .
Parentheses also may be used to control a search query. Without parentheses, a search is executed from left to right. Words that you enclose in parentheses are searched first. Why is this important? Parentheses allow you to control and define the way the search will be executed. The left phrase in parentheses is searched first; then, based upon those results, the second phrase in parentheses is searched.
Generalized Search : dog or cat and show or parade
Focused Search : (dog or cat) and (show or parade)
In the first example, the search will retrieve everything on dog or cat shows as well as everything on parades, whether or not the articles refer to dogs or cats.
In the second example, we have used the parentheses to control our query to only find articles about shows or parades that reference dogs or cats.
Typically, when a phrase is enclosed by double quotation marks , the exact phrase is searched. This is not true of phrases containing stop words. A stop word will never be searched for in an EBSCO host database, even if it is enclosed in double quotation marks. A search query with stop words only (i.e. no other terms) yields no results.