Nursing: Additional Search Tips

The words "AND," "OR," and "NOT" can help you make a search more precise. This is called Boolean searching, and it can seem really intimidating, but once you get the hang of them, Boolean searches can really help you!

For example, the search 'films AND psychology NOT children', will return a search with results that contain the keywords 'films' and 'pyschology' but not 'children' - important if you are only looking at adolescent psychology in films.

Learn more with this guide from the MIT libraries. It really helps explain Boolean searching, and you don’t have to be a computer scientist to understand!

The following video also outlines the ways to use advanced search techniques in databases.

Strategies for Searching

Using library resources to find information can feel tough at first, but there are lots of features built-in to actually make your life easier!

• Use Keywords, Not Sentences: Look at your research question and pull out the most important words and search just those.
• Try Synonyms: If you don't find what you need, try to think of other ways to say the same thing. Example: adolescent and teenager
• Find Subject Headings: When you find an article that looks promising, click the subject headings (in blue) to find similar articles. Think of these like a librarian's hashtag; if you can figure out what the experts are calling your topic, you'll find more.
•  Use Boolean Operators: AND - Narrows your search by combining terms, OR - Broadens your search by including any of the terms, NOT - Excludes terms to narrow your results
• Still stuck? Ask a librarian for help! We are experts at finding information and love a challenge!

You can't read 100,000 or even 1,000 articles. Refine your searches to limit your results to just the articles you need!

🍎 I Have the Article Citation - Now What?

A citation is like an address—it tells you where to find the article.

1. Understand the Citation:

• Journal Title: Where it was published.
• Article Title: The name of the article.
• Author(s): Who wrote it.
• Year, Volume, Issue, Pages: Details to help find it.

Example (APA):
Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(3), 5–13.
In the example above:

• The New Criterion is the title of the journal.
• The eclipse of listening is the article title.
• Scruton, R. is the author's name.

2. Find the Article:

• Search by Journal Title: Use the "Finding Journals" tool on the library website.
• Search by Article Title: Use OneSource to look up the article directly.

3. Get the Article:

• If it's available, view or download it.
• If not, request it through Interlibrary Loan.
• Save the link using a "Permalink" so you can access it later.

Need Help?
Check out the Virginia Tech Citation Tutorial for more practice!