EENG/MENG 4380: Mechanical Engineering Design

Brainstorm search terms by:

• Considering the who, what, where, when, why of your research questions
• Searching reference sources (as found in the previous page)
• Exploring a database's thesaurus
• Brainstorming keywords with your instructor, a librarian, or your friend

Booleans further Explained

Booleans describe a logical relationship between search terms.

AND

cat AND dog

• Narrows your search
• Both words must be present

SES Example

ACL AND therapy

OR

cat OR dog

• Expands your search
• Either term may be present

SES Example

ACL OR anterior cruciate ligament

NOT

cat NOT dog

• Refines your search
• Excludes the second word from your results

SES Example

therapy NOT acupuncture

Check Your Booleans Knoweldge

Limit your results by:

Availability

• Require the item to be full-text or not.
• If you have time, do not require full-text as we can obtain information you need through a Interlibrary Loan Request.

Resource Type

• Restrict to journals, books, etc.

Date

• You can limit your results to the most recent research. Medical information should be time-restricted. Generally, limiting to the last 5 years will help you find the most current research.

Subject

• Search terms may find information through various subjects. Consider limiting your results to your specific subject.

Language

• Narrow your results by limiting them to only languages you can read.

And many more...

Nesting (also known as grouping) is a means to create a sophisticated search that combines multiple search words and booleans and is based on PEMDAS from math class. Let's explore this concept through a search.

Searching without Nesting

Lets say I'm researching ankle sprains and fractures.

• Here are my search terms:
  • Ankle, sprains, and fractures.
• Lets truncate the words so I can find other variants of the words.
  • Ankle*, sprain*, and fractur*.
• Now to use booleans to connect the words together. Remember I want to find articles about ankle fractures or ankle sprains.
  • ankle* AND sprain* OR fractur*

This will come back with articles that talk about:

• Ankle sprains
  • Resulting from the ankle* AND sprain* part my search
• Any article that mentions fractures, regardless of the location of the fracture

This doesn't help me since I'm looking for ankle sprains or ankle fractures.

Adding in Nesting

I communicate this to the search more clearly by using nesting (wrapping my terms and booleans using parentheses).

ankle* AND (sprain* OR fracture*)

With this search, this is what the search engine does:

1. Find all the articles that mention either the term sprains or fractures
2. From that list, find all the articles that mention the word ankle
3. Present results

The following is an example of refining my search in an attempt to find research on the keto diet.

You can use Scholarly Communication to your advantage when search for information by looking at past articles through reference mining and looking for articles since published by citation tracking.