LSU Libraries - Searching Techniques and Strategies Tutorial

CONTENTS:

Introduction
Generating Search Terms
Boolean Searching
Combining Terms
Truncation
Field Searching

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Introduction, Instructions

In this tutorial, you will learn how to select a topic for a research project, and generate search terms that you can use to do online searching for information about that topic. You will learn about concepts like truncation and boolean logic, which will help you use those terms to formulate more complicated and precise searches, which will save you time and effort. These searching techniques are very general, and will work in a wide variety of online databases like the Online Catalog, Academic Search Premier, or Internet search engines.

To navigate the tutorial, simply click the "Next" or "Back" tiger paws at the bottom of each page. This will walk you through the tutorial sequentially. If you would like to move between or skip around the sections of the tutorial, you may click on the "Contents" box on the left side of the screen. This brings out a hyperlinked Table of Contents to the tutorial. To hide the contents, click it again.

This tutorial should take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

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URL: http://www.lib.lsu.edu/instruction/searching/searching01.html
Last Updated: Wednesday, 29-Aug-2007 16:47:18 CDT