Using a few of these tips and strategies can greatly increase your success in identifying research materials relevant to your search in ORO.
Basic Search:
Simply type in words related to your research and the system will return materials which reference all of those words - the more words you use, the fewer results you are likely to find.
Utilizing AND, OR, NOT:
By adding these words – known as boolean operators – between words in your search, you can have greater control over your search results.
Ex.
- depression AND economics would return materials which reference both of those words
- depression OR economics would return materials which reference either of those words (not necessarily both)
- depression NOT economics would return only materials that reference the first word but not the second
Specific Field Search:
You can search within specific fields (title, author, keyword, etc.) by starting your search with the specific field names below:
- “dc.title:”
- ex. dc.title:depression
- “dc.contributor.author:”
- ex. dc.contributor.author:brown
- “dc.subject.keywords:”
- ex. dc.subject.keywords:economics
Search Within a Date Range:
Similar to the specific field search above, by starting your search with “dc.date.issued:” and then inputting the date range as formatted below, you can search for materials only within that range.
- “dc.date.issued:[YYYY TO YYYY]”
- ex. dc.date.issued:[1988 TO 2004]
Search for Similar Words:
Use an asterisk * – known as a wildcard – at the end of your search term to find results with words that start the same way.
- ex. To search for materials starting with “econom” (economics, economy, economists, etc.), simply search econom*
- ex. To search for materials starting with “depress” (depression, depressed, depressive, etc.), search for depress*
Find Exact Phrases:
Put your search terms in quotation marks to find results that contain the exact phrase you typed. This will result in a very limited search.
Find Things With Symbols:
If you need to search for a symbol like a colon (:) or asterisk (*), put those symbols in quotation marks so the search engine understands you want to search for the symbol itself, not use it as a special instruction.
- For example, searching for “economics: depression era” in quotations will find articles with the exact phrase "economics: depression era" (including the colon).