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French Studies: Search Tips

Search Tips

Search Tools

A well-constructed search string will help you search databases more effectively. This search string can use three helpful tools: Boolean operators, phrase searching, and truncation.

Boolean Operators

Operators: AND, OR, and NOT

Boolean operators are used to combine search terms efficiently and assign functions to these terms. Boolean operators include:

  • AND: Combining terms with AND means that all terms must be present. 
    • Proust AND memory: This search string will produce results that mention both Proust and memory, such as articles about the depiction of memory in Proust's work.
  • OR: Combining terms with OR means that at least one term must be present.
    • memory OR recall: This search string will produce results that mention memory, recall, or both. Your results would therefore include articles using different terms to discuss memory.
  • NOT: Combining terms with NOT means that the term that follows NOT must be absent.
    • Proust NOT Adrien: This search will produce results that mention Proust, but exclude any results that refer to his father, Adrien Proust (who wrote about medicine). 

Several of these operators can be used in the same search string. In this case, operators should be grouped together with brackets or separate lines of a search. This grouping is similar to the use of brackets in a math equation. 

  • (Proust NOT Adrien) AND (memory OR recall)

Phrase Searching

Operator: " "

With many databases, the default when multi-word search terms are used in a search string is to treat those words as separate terms combined with the operator AND. These terms may therefore show up separately, rather than as a single term, and in any order. To connect the words into a phrase, use quotation marks.

  • "involuntary memory" will produce search results that have those terms together, side-by-side.

Truncation

Operator: *

Truncation produces results with different variants of a word. Rather than typing out each possible variant, cut off the word where the ending might change and add an asterisk.

  • remember* will produce search results with terms such as remember, remembers, remembered, remembering, rememberence.