Searching in Tripod and in Journal Databases
1.) Keywords allow you to construct a search that reflects multiple issues in your research question. Building sets of related concepts and looking for their overlaps gives you more relevant and precise results. This approach is also called Boolean searching.
Related concepts (magic* OR charm* OR occult*)
Tips: Enclose in parentheses
Capitalize the ORs
* ( Truncate) Searches root words with all the different endings; politic* = politics, politician, political, etc.
“ “ Enclose phrases in quotation marks, e.g. “love magic” to get the words together in that order
Overlaps (magic* OR charm* OR occult*) (greece OR greek OR roman OR rome OR latin) (woman* OR women* OR female* OR gender* OR sex*)
Tips: Add the other related concept groups
Tripod automatically supplies the AND between parentheses so that you see only titles that have at least 1 keyword from each of the 3 groups
Results (magic* OR charm* OR occult*) (greece OR greek OR roman OR rome OR latin) (woman* OR women* OR female* OR gender* OR sex*) = 283 titles in Tripod
Results display automatically in relevancy order with the records having the highest number of keywords appearing first
Sorting for the newest books first shows recent scholarship
2.) Subject Headings allow you to find relevant material grouped together including titles that do not use the keywords you may have been searching.
Finding subject headings
Look at a book record in Tripod, check the subjects assigned to it, and choose whatever ones are relevant for your research.
Example: Verbal syntax in the Greek Pentateuch: natural Greek usage and Hebrew interference.
by T. V. Evans. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Subjects:
Subject search greek language biblical = 185 results
Refining subject searches
You can combine different concepts into a single subject search for precision. The results are more focused than a keyword search.
But all the words have to be terminology used in library subject cataloging.
To ensure this, you can use subject headings you have already found or browse in the subject headings for more choices.
Combination subject search:
(greek OR hellen*) (bible OR biblical) influence = 13 results
Smaller number of results than the search above, but includes more specific titles of interest
3.) Other Databases
Other databases covering journal articles and primary sources also rely on advanced searching with AND and OR. Année philologique works best if you build synonyms together in one box, e.g. (eros OR love) and leave the connectors between search boxes as ANDs.
When search Année philologique for a classical text or writer, use the Ancient Authors and Texts tab to verify the form of name used in the database, e.g. Vergilius Maro and Oracula Sibyllina. In this way you will find all the articles about an author or text no matter what form of the name is used in the titles or abstracts.
