CRMJ 2244 - Criminology: Find Articles

Quotation Marks/Phrase Searching

Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase, this narrows a search. Example: "serial killer"

Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT

And—narrows a search by inclusion. Example: "serial killer" and psychology

Or—expands a search. Example: "serial killer" or "serial murderer"

Not—narrows a search by exclusion. Example: "serial murderer" not "mass murderer"

Truncation

Truncation, usually using an asterisk*, increases the number of results you'll retrieve by searching for variant endings of a word root.
Example: kill* will find: kill, killed, killer, killing

Your search strategy will combine keywords related to your topic using the search techniques described above. Here are a couple examples:
                        1. "serial killer" or "serial murderer"
                        2. "serial kill*"  and law

This search strategy is what you will type into the search box in a library database or Google to find sources about your topic.