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Occupational Therapy

Create a Search Using Commands

1. Isolate keywords.

                                               Image that lists the question "How does cultural competence impact the health care system in the United States? With cultural competence, health care, and United States highlighted to show how to pull them out in a search.

2. Narrow your search results to include all of your keywords using AND.

"United States" AND cultural competence AND health care

Venn diagram that has "United States" AND "Cultural Competence" AND "Health Care" to try and display how when using Boolean Operators the three intersect.

3. Expand your search using OR to find like terms.

"United States" AND "cultural competence" AND ("health care" OR healthcare)

 

This was created based on University of New Mexico Health Sciences Library Guide

Combining search terms with AND:

  • Narrows your search, reducing the number of results.
  • Makes the search focus more specifically on your topic.

Vin diagram that indicates how AND intersects (example written out in text in this box).

For Example

A search for "United States" yields 314,000 results results

A search for cultural competence yields 1,700 results

A search for cultural competence AND "United States" yields 429 results

Combining search terms with OR:

  • Expands your search and increases number of results.

Vin diagram that indicates how OR intersects (example written out in text in this box).

For Example

A search for "health care" yields 263,000 results

A search for healthcare yields 170,000 results

A search for "health care" OR healthcare yields 317,000 results

Combining search terms with NOT:

  • Narrows your search, decreasing your search results.
  • Tells the search to exclude certain terms.

Diagram that indicates how not works, when you use it for by saying NOT family you find caregiver without the word family (example written out in text in this box).

For Example

A search for caregiver yields 13,300 results

A search for caregiver NOT family yields 6,700 resul

Brief Video Tutorials

Keyword and Subject Searching

Keywords Subject Terms
Natural language words that describe your topic Pre-defined "controlled vocabulary" that describe what an item is about
More flexible search - looks for anywhere the words appear in the record Less flexible search - only the subject fields will be searched
Broader search, but may yield irrelevant results Targeted search; results are usually more relevant to the topic, but may miss some variations

Keyword searching is how we normally start a search. Pull out important words or phrases from your topic. 

Subject Terms and/or Headings are pre-defined terms that are used to describe the content of an item. These terms are a controlled vocabulary and function similarly to hashtags on social media.

 

Borrowed from MIT What are subject headings and keywords? box and Sarah Lawrence Finding Resources Guide for some concepts displayed here.