Chat with a Librarian
Skip to Main Content
ask a librarian email questions

Search Strategies and Techniques

This guide will walk you through various search strategies you could use in the library databases.

Quotation Marks

Sometimes you may want to search for a phrase (2 or more words) in a database. When you are searching phrases, put quotation marks around the phrase. This will tell the database to search the phrase as a whole, instead of as individual words.

Examples

"common cold"

"primary school"

"community college"

EBSCO

Example of searching "community college" in EBSCO

Gale

Example searching "community college" in Gale Power Search

 

Subjects: Research Tips