Alison Lyn, W14: Search Strategies

Boolean Logic helps a writer organize different concepts together by using the words ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’. When using ‘and’, you get research that includes both of the search terms. When using ‘or’, it widens the search, by giving results of either of the search terms. And when using ‘not’, it narrows down the search and gives you similar results and by focusing on what you don’t want. I have not necessarily used it as much as I should have, only using ‘and’ for my search, but do feel it can be helpful for other research.

When you are searching by a ‘subject’, you are being as specific as possible to get the desired results.  It is useful to know how to lookup official subjects in a database, because helps you refine what you are actually researching, and can help you knowing what you need to be looking for, and what you don’t need. I have searched using official subjects and found that it does indeed help, and I will continue to use it, to get the best results.

I don’t necessarily have a preference between Google Scholar and Library Databases, though for this assignment, I found myself using Proquest for majority of my research because of its search abilities. How I might use them in combination is because, I assume, that Google Scholar gets more recent data, I would use Google Scholar for newer research, and use certain library data bases for maybe background information. It really depends on what database you are using. I will rely on both, since I don’t have a preference for future research.