Montgomery College Libraries, Nursing Academic Tutorial

Search Type: Keyword Anywhere

Searches entire record including title, table of contents, subjects, author, publisher.

Put plus signs ( + ) before essential keywords, asterisks ( * ) before important keywords: +picasso *biography

Use quotation marks for phrases: "united states" or "assisted suicide"

Search Type: Keyword Boolean

This type of search requires that you construct a search expression. Search expressions have three elements:

Keywords

Tend to be nouns: biology or "iraq war"

Avoid verbs: cause or against

Boolean Operators

AND tells the computer to search for both or all words:
    children AND media AND violence

OR tells the computer to search for either or any of the words:
    images OR graphics

NOT tells the computer to drop all items that use the word or phrase that follow:
    terrorism NOT ireland

Librarians caution against using NOT

A keyword is an important word about your topic. Keep in mind that there can be other

words used to describe a topic than one you may be using.