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Creating a Plan

a. Keyword Searching | b. Advanced Keyword Searching | c. Subject Searching

Advanced Keyword Searching

Advanced techniques help you further refine your search and improve the relevancy of the articles you find. Combine these with your basic Boolean searching (AND OR) to get the best results.

• NOT
  • narrows the search to exclude specific words
    • media NOT television
• Phrase Searching ""
  • search for two or more words that would appear as a phrase
    • "media bias"
• Truncation ?, $, *
  • pick up all variations of a word: singular, plural, etc
    • televis?, televis$, televis*

Databases and Internet Search Engines use different advanced searching techniques. Compare the advanced searching techniques for 3 different kinds of search tools (UCAT Library Catalog, ProQuest article database, and AltaVista web search engine) in the Comparison Guide.

Databases include help sections that tell you the types of advanced searching techniques that are available or you can check out UTSA's Tip Sheets

ProQuest Worksheet