If you search a catalog or database and receive a large number of results, add a limit or additional keyword in order to retrieve a manageable and relevant number of results to review. At the same time overly narrow search terms can return too few results. One way of solving both problems is to use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). They allow you to define concepts and determine their relationships. They also give you opportunities to limit or expand searches depending on your needs.
A search for migrant AND protection will return items that contain both terms:
immigrant OR refugee allows you to put related words together with results that contain either one of the terms or both:
human rights NOT trafficking returns items that talk about humans rights issues but do not mention trafficking:
Phrase searching:
An important strategy to use when searching for phrases ("human rights") or titles:
"Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration and Identity"
will search for those words in that order, finding the 2018 book by Ahmed Akbar addressing tensions over Islam.
Truncation and Wildcards:
Most catalogs and databases enable users to search variations of keywords by using truncation (*) or wildcard (e.g., ?, $, !) symbols.
For example, one could search for politic* to find poltic, politics, political, politicking, and so on.
Wildcard searches are for differences within words: a search for wom?n will return results for woman, women, and womyn.
Nested Searching:
When pairing two or more keywords and connecting them to other concepts, it is important to "nest" the former terms within a larger Boolean search. (immigrant* OR refugee*) AND ("european union" OR France OR germany)
Focus Your Search:
Choose where the database is searching. It may be set automatically for keyword. You can make the search more precise by looking instead for title words only or for subjects.
Putting Your Search Statement Together:
(immigrant* OR refugee*) AND ("human rights") as Subjects AND ("european union" OR France OR germany) AND asylum as Keywords
In Proquest Research Library this search returns 116 scholarly articles published since 2018 including:
"Blurred Lines: Detaining Asylum Seekers in Britain and France"
Bosworth, Mary; Vannier, Marion. Journal of Sociology Vol. 56, Iss. 1, (Mar 2020): 53-68
"Countering Right-Wing Populism: Transgressive Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity Movements in Europe"
Rygiel, Kim; Baban, Feyzi. American Quarterly Vol. 71, Iss. 4, (Dec 2019): 1069-1076.