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Database Search Tips and Tricks
- Using quotation marks around a name or phrase will ensure that your search is dedicated only to that phrase
- "Civil War" will bring back results that have the exact phrase Civil War, while searching for civil war will bring back results that may include either the word civil, or the word war — not necessarily both!
- Try a truncated search
- If you aren't sure how the research may refer to your topic, try to whittle down the word to its base and include an asterisk at the end
- For example: if you search "child*" then the database will search for "child" "childs" "children" "childrens" "childhood"
- Try a wildcard search
- A wildcard search allows for different potential spellings, plurals, and tenses of a word
- For example: searching "wom!n" will have the database bring back results about "women" and "woman"
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