Typing your search terms into the search box of any of our library databases or our discovery service will perform a basic search, but you can click "Advanced Search" beneath the search box to make your search more narrow or more broad. Here are a few tips to make the most of your advanced searching:
The words “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT” can be used to broaden or narrow your search. Use these by placing them in between your search terms in all caps. “AND” will bring back results that use both search terms, “OR” will bring back results with either search term, and “NOT” will bring back results with the first search term but not the second.
- Search within specific fields
You can use the dropdowns to the right of the advanced search boxes to specify which part of the item the search terms should appear in. So if you wanted to search for the word “business” in the title of the article, you would select “TI Title” in the dropdown. Other fields you can search include journal title, author, subject terms, and abstract.
The limiters underneath the advanced search boxes can help you narrow you search results in lots of different ways. For example, if you are only interested in online resources, you can select “Online Full Text Only” and your search results will exclude physical books in the library. If you select the “Peer Reviewed” box, your search results will only include articles that are included in peer reviewed journals.
See the picture to the right for an example of what an advanced search might look like.