Journal databases and library catalogs are content-rich and constructed for many different types of inquiries. Use the searching strategies and techniques outlined below to capture relevant content. This will produce more focused results than a simple keyword search.
In putting together search terms, think about the topic and how specific you want it to be. You will find often that there is more material than you expected and that you actually want to focus your search by adding a further concept.
You might be interested in finding out more about disability studies. After browsing some books, you decide that prejudice and lack of understanding in regard to the disabled are issues you want to research. From reading you find that these concepts are often described as ableism.
Use AND to join two different concepts together, seeing only those results that discuss both ideas.
ableism AND education
Use OR to include synonyms for relevant results. Group the synonyms within parentheses to be searched correctly.
(education OR school*)
Combine OR and AND searches together (education OR school*) AND ableis*
Use truncation to get words with similar spellings in one search: disab* searches disabled and disabilities
For truncation within a word, use a question mark: wom?n searches women, woman, and womyn
Put phrases in "" "" for exact searches: "human rights" searches for those words together in that order
Too many results? Change the search field to Abstract which summarizes the content or Subject for more focused results
When you find a journal article that interests you, look at the abstract and subject terms.