Searching Language
chronic pain |
mushrooms |
chronic illness
fibromyalgia
arthritis
CPS (chronic pain syndrome)
|
fung* (fungi, fungus, fungal)
mycology
psilocybin
psychedelic
|
Sample search query using these terms:
["chronic pain" OR fibromyalgia OR arthritis OR CPS]
AND
[mushroom OR fung* OR mycology OR psilocybin OR psychedelic]
Examples of other search queries in this spreadsheet
Strategies for Developing Search Queries
- Keep track of key terms and synonyms (and add more terms as you go!)
- Identify additional terms:
- Browse synonyms in a thesaurus
- Include scientific or species names, when relevant
- Consider how a concept is described in different contexts: academic, trade, popular, etc.
- Consider using Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) or other controlled vocabularies
- Connect terms using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
- peanut butter AND jelly = search results with both terms
- peanut butter OR jelly = search results with either term
- peanut butter NOT jelly = search results exclude jelly
- Use special punctuation when appropriate
- Quotation marks around more than one word preserve a phrase as one unit (e.g. “social media”)
- Truncation searches for multiple words with same root (e.g. activ* includes active, activism, activity...)
- Wildcard searching allows for multiple spellings of words
- Hashtag: Use colo#r can be used to find all records containing color or colour.
- Question mark: Use ne?t to find all records containing neat, nest or next.