Information Literacy (Search Strategies)...(Topic 3)

In The Name of Allah

Under this topic, I have learnt many essential pieces of information.

Firstly, about Brainstorming for Search Terms. There are some examples of subject headings such as, library subject headings, science subject headings and thesaurus of psychological index terms.

Secondly, I was briefed about

Boolean Searching that allows me to group words together in an electronic database or environment such as the World Wide Web to receive a number of different types of results.
I have known that by using an AND & NOT between words I limit the search. But, by placing an OR between words it expands the search. Additionally, when I use OR I receive more information because the search engine is looking for two words rather than just one word.

             

Thirdly, Truncation and Wildcards that broaden my search capabilities by allowing me to retrieve multiple spellings of a root word or word stem, such as singular and plural forms.

I have understood that a wildcard is a special character, such as an asterisk (*), question mark (?), or pound sign (#), that replaces one or more letters in a word. However, Truncation is using a wildcard at the end of a root word to search multiple variations of that root word.

Example of Truncation (teach*…..which will try to find about teach, teacher, teaching…etc.).

Finally, I was taught about Phrase Searching

Which is when I use a string of words (instead of a single word) to search with. By using phrase searching, I will retrieve fewer results for faster searching.