Truncation search includes a symbol, most commonly an asterisk * but possibly !, ? or # at the end of a word root to look for various word endings.

universit* finds university as well as universities; child* finds child, child's, children
 

Wildcard search uses a symbol, often an asterisk * or ?, in place of an unknown character or characters for words with variant spellings.

labo*r find labor as well as labour; wom?n finds woman as well as women
 

Phrase search uses quotation marks " " around phrases or word combinations.  This ensures a database searches a term or concept like "artificial intelligence" as a phrase and not as separate words.  

"artificial intelligence"  may find more focused or fewer irrelevant search results than the same search without quotes.
 

Proximity operators include WITH, NEAR, W#, N# to narrow searches to find results in which words are found near or within a certain distance of one another. In full text searching, this can increase the likelihood that words or phrases are found within the same context.

"artificial intelligence" N5 labor in EBSCO databases retrieves results in which the two terms are within 5 words of each other in either order.  

BASIC SEARCH SCREEN, with use of parentheses () or Nested Searching

The basic search screen in most databases provides one search box.  Therefore, use parentheses ( ) aka nested searching to group various concepts or search operations.   

ADVANCED SEARCH SCREEN

The advanced search screen provides multiple search boxes.  Parentheses are not needed in this example because concepts are already organized within boxes.

DROP DOWN MENUS

Databases will allow you to choose where you want the database to find your keywords. Some databases will search full-text in addition to the title, abstract, subject terms, etc. This can increase the results and include potentially unrelated results. Using the drop down menus will adjust the search so that you are only searching specific parts of a record. 

Save or export your searches: This is a good way to keep track of what you have searched and what the results were. 

If you find an article that is helpful to your research topic you can look at the literature it has cited to find related articles, books, and more. This list will be at the end of an article

Many databases will also provide links to articles that have cited that specific article. These can lead you to literature related to your topic and also potentially indicate the importance of an article in a subject area. 

Google Scholar can also be used to identify where an article may have been cited by others. 

1. Search systematically: Write out keyword strings, search one database at a time, track the number of results while refining searches. 

2. Adjust the search for each database if necessary: Different databases can use different terminology. 

3. Look at the subject terms applied to an article. This will identify standard terminology to help refine your search or identify more keywords

4. Utilize the database thesaurus when possible to identify subject terms