Boolean Searching
1. Use AND to combine words when you want to find articles that have both words.
Example: tea AND coffee
2. Use OR to combine words when you want to find articles that have either of the words (not necessarily both, but one or the other).
Example: coffee OR cappuccino
3. You can combine both AND and OR to create a good advanced search strategy, either by using parentheses or multiple search bars.
Example: tea AND (coffee OR cappuccino)
Phrase Searching
Put quotation marks around phrases in the search bar to ensure that the words are searched as a phrase, not individually.
Example: "social media"
Example: "early childhood education"
Truncation
Put an asterisk ( * ) at the end of words to fill in different word endings.
Example: Canad* will find: Canadian, Canadians, Canada, Canadas
Example: achieve* will find achieves, achieve, achievement, achievements
Caution: you may end up finding words that you didn't want!
Example: Chin* will find China and Chinese, but it will also find chin, chins, and chinstrap (penguins!).