Skip to Main Content

FYS 1024 -03: Leadership Pathways- Shively

Libguide for Denise Shively's FYS: 1024-02

From Question to Keyword

Video courtesy of Lloyd Sealy Library.

Keyword? Subject?

Keyword

Searches
  • Find words located anywhere in the information about the item (book, video, article, etc.) 
  • Do not use “controlled vocabulary” such as a thesaurus to optimize their usefulness 
  • Will often find results that aren't exactly what you had in mind
  • Are useful when you can't remember the whole title of a book, video, etc. 

Subject

Searches
  • Use a “controlled vocabulary” to create words and terms; this often makes your searches more powerful and precise
  • Using the appropriate subject vocabulary (subject headings) will retrieve all items described with that "controlled vocabulary"
  • Knowledge of the appropriate "controlled vocabulary" is required to do a subject search

Advanced

Searches
  • Allow the searcher to combine keyword searches with subject searches
  • Provide a method for narrowing results within a pool of relevant results

Advanced Searching with Boolean Operators

Using the power of "Boolean operators" in your search enriches the quality of the information you find. For example, adding "AND" allows you to narrow your search to find results with more than one search term in them. Using "OR" will broaden your search to find results with any of the search terms used. Adding "NOT" to a search removes an unwanted word from all of your results. Really advanced searches can incorporate more than one Boolean operator to make search results very specific and pertinent to your research.

leadership AND society AND practices = The search engine will find results using ALL THREE terms 

leadership roles OR  non-traditional leaders= using OR with synonyms increases the variety in your results; search results will include ANY of the terms 

women NOT management  = using NOT will exclude a term; this is often useful to avoid a commonly used term that is irrelevant to your research

(leader NOT professional) AND (roles OR practices) = use parentheses to "control" mini-searches, then connect the mini-searches with AND to make a sophisticated advanced search

Wildcard Symbol: Using the asterisk (*) after part of a search term looks for several variations of the word. For example, autobiograph* will find autobiography, autobiographies, or autobiographical.  (Some databases use the ! exclamation point for the wildcard symbol. Check out the help section of any library resource for a list of acceptable symbols.)