Enhancing your search
As we learned in the previous section, some of the information you need for university will not be accessible to you rely exclusively on Google. Instead, you may need to access Library search tools (e.g., Discovery and subject-specific databases).
It’s likely that you search for information every day - you’ll type some keywords into Google, press search and hope you find what you need quickly. As soon as you press search Google uses complex algorithms to find web pages that it thinks are relevant and then presents them to you as a list of results. However, you’ve probably seen for yourself how, sometimes, Google might not give you the answers you expected.
When you’re busy studying, you need to make sure that you are finding the most relevant information as quickly as possible, This can be even trickier when using a library search tool or database.
This section will guide you through a range of advanced techniques and tools, helping you to obtain relevant resources quickly and effectively.
This guide will discuss the following topics:
- Search Techniques (including using Boolean Operators, phrase searching, truncation, applying limiters, and field searching)
- Saving Your Searches
- Citation Searching
