What if I have too many results? Try narrowing your search!
All database records have subject terms that describe the resource. Subject terms can help you add additional keywords.
broader search: tourism
narrower search: global tourism
Use limiters
Using field, content type, publication date, scholarly and peer reviewed, and/or full text online will narrow your search.
Putting quotation marks around a short phrase is a great way to narrow your search. When searching for the phrase social media, results include all resources with the word social and all resources with the word media. Searching for "social media" only returns results that have the entire phrase.
Most library databases (and our library catalog) use the Boolean Operators AND, OR, and NOT which are used to combine concepts and broaden or narrow your search.
Searching for: climate change AND tourism will only return results that contain both terms.
Searching for: United States OR U.S.A. OR u.s. OR America is going to give you more results than using only one of these terms since all are used and acceptable.
Searching for: climate change AND tourism NOT (United States OR U.S.A. OR u.s. OR America) will narrow your results.
Note: Use NOT with caution as it could exclude results that you could otherwise want.
What if I have too few results? Try broadening your search!
Try related terms (you can find these by using a thesaurus or by looking at the subject terms included in each record in every database.
Don't include unnecessary words when searching. Focus on key concepts.
Instead of rural high school students try high school students. Instead of Huntington, West Virginia try West Virginia.
Does the database you are using have resources from your discipline?