Astronomy (Physics 1500) - Midterm Project: Search Tips

Whether using Google, or one of the library databases, make your searching easier by using these tips!

Keywords—Keywords are one way to create search strategies to locate relevant information on your topic. Keywords are the most significant words and phrases associated with your topic.

Quotation Marks/Phrase Searching—Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase.

            Example: “surface gravity”    

Truncation—Usually using an asterisk*, increases the number of results you’ll retrieve by searching for variant endings of a word root.

            Example: explor* retrieves explore, explorer, exploration, exploring, etc..

Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT

And—narrows a search by inclusion.

Example: "magnetic field" AND mars retrieves only sources that include both search terms, which limits the number of results.  

Or—expands a search.

Example: nutrition OR "food supplies" will retrieve sources containing either term, expanding your pool of resources.    

Not—narrows a search by exclusion.

Example: climate NOT earth retrieves only sources that contain the first keyword, eliminating sources for keywords that follow not.

You can use Google to search for information, but consider using a library database! A database is a collection of quality sources, including books, e-books, and different types of articles (academic, newspaper, magazine, trade). This short video describes how to run a search in the FiSH database. FiSH searches most of the library resources using one simple search box. You can use the Library's FiSH database to search for information for your off-world summary.

To access FiSH, type your keywords into the search box below..