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 oil AND violence will return items that contain both "oil" and "violence":
"Crude oil" OR petroleum returns items that contain either one of the terms or both:
"Environmental activists" NOT "Deep Green Resistance" returns items that talk about groups other than DGR:
Phrase searching:
An important strategy to use when searching for phrases ("indigenous politics") or titles:
For example, "environmental justice"
will search for those words in that order, finding the 2009 reference text edited by David Newton.
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 environment* to find environment, environmental, environmentalism, 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, ("crude oil" OR petroleum) AND ("indigenous people" OR "Native American" OR "First Nations") will return results for the union of the two subject areas.
In the GreenFILE database this search returns results including: Beausoleil, D. et al. (2022) ‘Essential components and pathways for developing Indigenous community‐based monitoring: Examples from the Canadian oil sands region.’ Integrated Environmental Assessment & Management, 18(2), pp. 407–427.