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Slavic 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. 
    • Russian AND migration: This search string will produce results that use both terms, Russian and migration, such as articles about the Russian language and migration or migration of Russian people.
  • OR: Combining terms with OR means that at least one term must be present.
    • migration OR emigration: This search string will produce results that mention migration, emigration, or both, allowing for the use of different terminology.
  • NOT: Combining terms with NOT means that the term that follows NOT must be absent.
    • language NOT written: This search will produce results that mention language, but exclude any results that refer to writing. This may help you limit your results to works talking about spoken communication. 

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. 

  • Russian AND (migration or emigration) AND (language NOT written)

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.

  • "Russian language" 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.

  • Russia* will produce search results with terms such as Russia, Russian, Russians, and Russianness.