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), which allow you to limit or expand searches depending on your needs.
For example, a search for labor AND indonesia will return items that contain both "labor" and "indonesia":
labor OR workers returns items that contain either "labor" or "workers" or both:
trade NOT union returns items that contain "trade" but not the word "union":
Phrase searching:
An important strategy to use when searching for phrases ("offshore manufacturing") or for titles in the Tripod Catalog:
For example, "global shift" will search for global AND shift in that order, finding the book by Peter Dicken
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 with another keyword, it is important to "nest" the former terms within a larger Boolean search.
For example, (labor OR work*) AND indonesia* will return results for Indonesia and any one (or both) of the parenthetical terms.
(Many catalogs and databases will have an "advanced search" option, which provides multiple search boxes to facilitate nested searching.)