Understanding Research

Finding Books

ODU Library Catalog info

OhioLINK Library Catalog info

Finding Articles

How Do I Search By KEYWORD?

From the ODU Library home page, click on Books to get to the ODU Library Catalog. Then type your words in the ODU Library Catalog search box near the top of that page. (You will notice that the search box is already defaulted for a keyword search.)

How to Use AND, OR, phrases, & Truncation
in Your Searches

When to Use AND:
Use the word AND in your search to combine the key elements, or keywords, in your topic in order to find only records that contain all of the words.

This is often the easiest and the best type of keyword search to use, because it is thorough yet focused: using AND ensures that all of the words you enter will be included in every record.

Example:

Your topic = violence in schools

The search you type in: schools and violence

You would simply type schools and violence in the search box. The catalog would find every record that has the word schools and the word violence.

When to Use a Phrase:
If you want to search for an EXACT PHRASE, such as
civil rights, simply type the phrase and place quotation marks around it.

Example: "civil rights"

Instead of using the word AND between the word civil and the word rights, by typing the phrase with quotation marks around the words, you will find only records with that exact phrase—with the words right next to each other and in that exact order.

When to Use OR:
Use the word OR between words to search for ANY SINGLE WORD you type in.

Example:

Using the word OR is useful when you are look for a VERY BROAD topic and are looking for items that have AT LEAST ONE of the words you type in. If you type in the keyword search business or management, you will find records with EITHER business OR management.

Try using OR with synonyms or related words so that if a record might not have one word, if it has the other, you will still pull up that record, for example:

• business OR management
• ethics OR morals
• children OR adolescents

When to Use Truncation:
Use an asterisk (*) to search for various endings of a word. This is called truncation.

Examples:
pollut* (will find pollute, polluted, pollution, etc.) medic* (will find medical, medically, medicine, etc.)

Using truncation is useful to find as many records as you can on your topic, because it will search for all of the variations of the word you type in.

Survivor Tip: Once you master these types of keyword searches—when and how to use which one—you will be well on your way to finding everything you need! You can even combine the types of searches above—ask a librarian for more search tips the next time you have to write a paper!

Next: Let's Do Some Searching