Michigan State University Libraries

Index Searching Frequently Asked Questions

• State the question in a sentence or two. For example, suppose your research question is: What are the personality traits of college students who drink alcohol?

• Identify the important (or key) words. In this example the key words are: personality, college students, alcohol.

• Identify any necessary relationships between words. For this search college and students need to go together.

• Decide on any synonyms to use. Personality can stand alone. College might also be university, and alcohol might also be booze or beer. Maybe booze would be good in a web search, but it's probably not used very often in the academic psychology literature.

• Put it all together. Here's where you have to know the search software (see the features chart for help). In the PsycINFO database on CSA the search would be: ((college or university) near students) and (alcohol or beer) and personality

• Make your search narrower. Your topic may be too broad. A search for violence will return lots of hits in many databases. Limit your topic by choosing an aspect to focus on. Add and juveniles or and domestic or some similar limiting word.
  

  Note: not all search software adds modifiers in the same way. Read the Help Screens

• Use date or language limits. If your results are mostly on target for the type of information you hoped to find, try picking some non-subject related criteria, like date of publication or language to limit your search.

• Check your search terms. Perhaps you are not stating your search in words indexers use. For example, a patron who wanted air pollution data for automobiles found plenty of information after we looked up what pollutants are in auto exhaust and searched by those terms.
• Ask a librarian for help. Don't give up until you've asked a librarian for help. Each vendor has different search software, so searching techniques that worked on one index sometimes won't work on a different system.

• Be specific. Many times people try to search by a broad subject that includes their topic. If you want information about the Army, don't look under military, use the word Army.

• Use synonyms joined by "OR" for major concepts. There is no standard terminology for some topics. Try stating what you want in several ways. Use "OR" to group synonyms. Don't forget (parentheses) around "OR" statements. For example: (youth or adolescents or teenagers).
  

  Note: Not all search software adds synonyms in the same way. Read the Help Screens

• Use a series of phrase searches. There are some topics we just can't make the computer understand. If you want information about teacher-to-teacher collaboration, and put in a search for teacher collaboration you will also get a lot of information about teacher-student or teacher-parent collaboration. In this case it might be best to try to state the phrase as it will appear. Use several options: (teacher to teacher collaboration) or (collaboration among teachers) or (teachers collaborating with teachers). When you get some good results, notice how the issue is stated in those records and use additional phrases as appropriate.
  

  Ask for help. Sometimes another person can suggest different language or a new way of approaching a topic.

MSU Libraries has a lot of proprietary information (owned by others, but we subscribe to it) posted on the web. Some of these sources are full text, try:

• FirstSearch
  
  Select the WilsonSelectPlus database for full text articles.
• Infotrac
  
  InfoTrac OneFile has many full text articles.
• ProQuest
  
  Most databases within this service have a substantial proportion of full text articles.
• LexisNexis Academic
  
  Also offers full text for most of its databases, which focus on news and legal information.
• Or use an index for your discipline and then look for the articles by using the FIND TEXT AT MSU link or looking up the journal in the Library Catalog.