KEYWORDS AND BOOLEAN OPERATORS

keywords
When using online databases or the World Wide Web to search for information, it is important to understand keyword searching. When you enter search terms, or keywords, into a database or search engine, the software program that executes your search compares the text or descriptors of the documents in its database to the keywords you entered on the search screen and retrieves documents that match them. While each database and search engine has its own unique interface and special searching features, there are certain tricks that work for all searches to improve your odds of retrieving only (or mostly) information that is relevant to your search:

• Be specific. Don't use broad terms such as dogs when what you are really looking for is information about standard poodles.
  
  
• Use nouns/objects. While it may be necessary to add modifiers to be more specific, the bulk of your key words should be nouns.
  
  
• Use more than one keyword. Whenever possible, your search terms should include at least three keywords. Try writing your query as a sentence and then pick out the noun/objects to use as your search terms (the Who, What, When, Where words). For example,if your question is "How can I locate breeders of standard poodles in Florida?", you could use the nouns breeders, standard poodles, Florida as our keywords.
  
  
• Put quotation marks around phrases.

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