ENVIR 480 Sustainability Consulting Practicum (Pursell): Database Searching: The Basics

• What is your research question?  (Be as specific as possible.)

What effects do wind farms have on birds?

• Identify the main concepts—keywords—in your question. 

Wind Farms                 Birds            

• Consider alternative terms—synonyms—for your keywords.

Synonyms for Wind Farms: Wind Energy, Wind Turbines

Synonym for Birds: Avian

• Link your keywords with connecting words AND or OR.  Note that AND limits your search results and OR expands results.
• Use an asterisk, *, as a truncation symbol at the end of words, to allow for plurals or alternate word endings.
• Use quotes around terms to search for exact phrases: “food web”

• Search Example:

("wind farm*" OR "wind energy" OR "wind turbine*") AND (bird* OR avian)

Not enough results?

• Reduce the number of key concepts in your search question.
• Increase the number of synonyms in your search, connected with OR.
• Make sure all search terms are spelled correctly.  Consider alternative spellings.
• Try other databases.

Too many results?

• Reduce the number of synonyms in your search.
• Search for your keywords only in titles or subject headings, rather than in all fields.
• Limit your search to the most recent years.