Biology: FRT-101-06: Humanity and Nature

Near Searching: Specifies how close words appear together in a text.

Example: If you would like words to occur within the same sentence or paragraph, use N12 (in EBSCO) or ~12 (in JSTOR) to request that the search terms appear within 12 words of each other.

EBSCO Search: Honeybees N12 "colony collapse disorder" 

JSTOR Search: "Honeybees colony collapse disorder" ~12

Truncation/Wildcard Searching: If a search term has multiple endings, search the root word and add an asterisks (*) at the end.

Example: Significan* searches Significance, Significant, and Significantly 

Phrases: To search multiple words as an exact phrase, use double quotation marks

Example: “white-tailed deer” 

Subject Headings: Subject headings are standardized controlled vocabulary that groups articles together by theme or topic. Subject headings attempt to combat challenges posed by synonyms.

• Note: Subject heading terms are not universal and vary from database to database. Use a database thesaurus to locate subject headings, or view subject headings assigned to articles on a database’s search results page (if available).  

Limiters/Filters: Most databases allow you to narrow your search results according to certain criteria. Common limiters (also called filters) include: Full-text, Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals, Publication Date, Publication Type, and Language.