Page 111 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Information Analysis and Repackaging

Notes The OR operator is used when either one term or another should be present, for example when
synonyms and alternative terms are included in the search string. The OR operator will broaden the
search and increase the amount of results. For example; teenagers OR young people.
There is also an operator that can be used when the information seeker wants to make sure that a
term is not present in the search. The NOT operator should be used with caution as it can eliminate
relevant references from the result list. For example: violence NOT political.
If a search string contains more than one Boolean operator (e.g. AND and OR), parentheses should
be used around keywords linked with the OR operator so that the search engine or database will be
able to decode the underlying conceptual structure and distinguish related terms from terms that
represent different subject concepts. For example, the results of the following search will include
documents that contain one of the words inside the parentheses (young people, teenagers, youth)
in addition to all of the other keywords (computer games, violence).

Phrase Search and Proximity Search

It is possible to conduct phrase searches on databases as well. By using the phrase search function, it
is possible to add an exact phrase, i.e. a combination of two or more words, to the search string. This
means that only documents that contain the exact phrase will be included in the result list. When
conducting a phrase search, the phrase has to be surrounded by quotation marks, e.g. “political
violence”.
Proximity searches can be conducted on full-text databases when the information seeker wants to
define the distance between the keywords in the document. Different databases may use different
proximity operators. For example, by using the proximity operator NEAR 3 the information seeker
can search for documents in which the distance of the keywords is three words. Another example of
a proximity search could be the search string political W3 situation, which will search for documents
in which the distance between the keywords is three words or less.

Parentheses can be used in a proximity search in the same way as in a Boolean search:
alternative terms linked with the OR operator should be in parentheses.
However, the order in which the database interprets the search string and conducts the search can
vary. The CSA database, for example, conducts the search in the following order:
( ) First, alternative terms inside parentheses
NEAR Second, keywords linked with a proximity operator
NOT Third
AND Fourth
OR Fifth

Limiting the Search

In many databases, it is possible to limit the search to a specific field, e.g. subject terms or the title of
the document. The search can also be limited to material published in a certain language and the
range of years for the search can be reduced as well.
Many databases offer the advanced search option, which can be used when the information seeker
wants to limit the search in this way. When using the advanced search form, the user can search for
documents according to the name of the author, the title, subject terms or the name of the journal in
which the material has been published, for example. Boolean operators can also be added to the
search string when using the advanced search option.

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