Here are some basics about Google searching.
Example: Health-care-reform
Every word counts
Case-insensitive: health or Health
Punctuation is generally ignored
Assumes an AND between terms: troops Afghanistan = troops AND Afghanistan
Ignores common words: gone with the wind = gone wind
Searches for synonyms automatically: child care = childcare
It's best to start narrow. When you search an online database, you probably don't want to start too narrow. But on the web, it's better to use more words than less.
Use quotation marks around a phrase to search for those words together.
Examples: health care -- “health care reform” intelligent design -- “intelligent design” green jobs-- “green jobs”
This guide is based on information from the Western Oregon University Hamersly Library CLIP Project. Hamersly Library has made the tutorials available for adaptation via Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
