ENGL 113EL: Writing Center Theory and Practice (Krane)

Here are some search tips, no matter which database you're using.

• Break your topic into main ideas, and turn those ideas into keywords.
  Distill your ideas into keywords. When developing keywords, you don't need to include causal relationship words (e.g. cause, impact, relationship). A search for the question Does exercise help teenage smokers change their behaviors? in a library database could look like this.

• Use an asterisk at the end of a word to retrieve various endings, and use quotation marks to search for phrases.
  For example, adolescen* will retrieve adolescent and adolescence. Putting quotation marks around "physical activity" will keep those words together, rather than retrieving results where those words appear separately.
   
• Use the word OR to separate synonyms.
  Learn more about AND, OR, NOT and building searches in the Boolean Logic box below!
   
• Use InterLibrary Loan to request an article we don't have online.
  If the full-text of an article is not available in the database, click on the "Find It @ SCU" link to see if it's available elsewhere. If not, you can request the article via Interlibrary Loan. This is a free service and you will usually get a PDF of the article in 1-2 business days. Check out our InterLibrary Loan FAQ for more info.

Using a search engine like Google is one way discover these materials. Google’s advanced search menu has a number of options you can use to refine your results. You can also use the following search tips:

• Put exact phrases you want to search in quotes
  • “ ” works like glue to keep words and phrases together in your search. This trick works in library databases too!
  • Example: “artificial intelligence”
  • Example: "large language model"
     
• Put a minus sign before words you don’t want in your results
  • Example: -plagiarism (if you’re not interested in results about plagiarism)
  • Example: -ChatGPT (if you’re getting overwhelmed by results focusing on this specific tool and you want to explore others)
     
• Limit your results to a specific domain, like .edu, .org, or .gov
  • Example: writing center policy site:.edu (could help you find examples of policies from university websites)
     
• Restrict your search to .pdf or .doc files (these file types are often used to distribute reports)
  • Example: teaching artificial intelligence filetype:pdf (will give you just results that are PDFs)
     
• Use Boolean logic to build your searches
  • You can use Boolean logic to build searches in both search engines and in library databases. See the box below for more information.

• Add keywords related to the type of information you're interested in
  • Example: ("high school" OR secondary) AND ChatGPT AND (report OR "fact sheet")

You might also consider trying other search engines beyond Google, as they often give different results. Many search engines change the results you see based on your previous searches, browsing history, sponsored content, and other factors. To avoid this, you can try a search engine like DuckDuckGo, which doesn't track your search history.

Boolean operators are terms you can use to narrow or broaden your search in a database, library catalog, or a search engine like Google. The three basic operators are: AND, OR, and NOT.  

Why use them?

• To focus a search when you are using multiple terms 
• To include synonyms for your search terms in order to find all variations  
• To exclude terms not relevant to your search

When using Boolean logic to create a search strategy, use double quotation marks (" ") when you are searching for a phrase (words you'd like to keep together).

Using AND

Use the operator "AND" in a search to: 

• Narrow your results 
• Tell the database that ALL the terms must be present in the search results 

Example: AI AND plagiarism AND "higher education"

Using OR

Use the operator OR to: 

• Broaden your search by telling the database that ANY of the terms can be present in your results 
• To include synonyms or related concepts for your search terms 

Example: "higher education" OR college OR university

Using NOT

Use the operator NOT to: 

• Narrow your results  
• Exclude specific words or concepts from your search results 

Example: "artificial intelligence" AND writing NOT ChatGPT

Nesting Operators

• Databases usually default to AND as the primary operator and connect concepts tied together with AND first. You can use parentheses ( ) to indicate to the database how you want your terms to be connected.  
• You can put operators together like an algebra equation.

Example: (AI OR "artificial intelligence" OR "large language model" OR LLM) AND (writing OR education) AND student

"Citation chaining" refers to the process of using sources to find more sources. There are two approaches -- forward and backward chaining.

Backward chaining

This approach uses one relevant source, or citation, to find more relevant sources on a topic by investigating who published on that particular topic before it was published. You can do this by scanning the works cited list at the end of an article and/or close-reading its literature review section.

Forward chaining

Some databases of scholarly articles will include a "cited by" feature, to let you know who referenced that particular article after it was published. Google Scholar does a fantastic job of this -- it's one of the ways you can maximize Google Scholar.

Search for the title of an article, and click the "Cited by..." button underneath it.

Clicking the "Cited by" link will bring up a set of results of citing literature, which you can do another search within. Check the box next to "Search within citing articles" and then enter your search terms in the bar above.