Home: DESIGN GUIDES

Library Research Basics

Image and Digital Resources

Where things are

Extremely Useful Library Tools

Specialized Resources Useful for Design

Other Library Resources

Design Library Home

Advanced Searching in Design

Librarian: Karen DeWitt

This page is not intended to be a guide to any database in particular, but rather a description of the usual search capabilities that are built into many databases. These capabilities may have different names from one database to the next. If you have problems, you should look on the help screens for the database you're using.

Advanced Searching in Keyword

You can use a single word in Keyword searching but it will most likely result in larger, less focused search results. For Keyword searching to be most useful in many databases, you should combine several words or phrases linked together or combined with AND, OR, or NOT. These are used to specify the relationships among the keywords. Using AND, OR, and NOT with Keyword searching will limit the number of results retrieved and will allow you to control or focus the search results to the specific information that you are looking for. There are also other types of searches you can do, such as Within, Field Searching, and Truncation.

AND

The catalog, and many other databases, still require that you use AND. Some databases will not require this, and if you put in a few terms, they will assume that you want AND inbetween all the terms. Check the appropriate help screens in the database to try to determine this, or try out a few searches to see what works. In the catalog, the AND operator allows you to search for records which have both search terms in them. This will enable you to combine specific information with general information. For example, if you are searching for H.W. Janson's textbook, History of Art, you can combine author and title words, so your search will be more focused and more precise.

OR

"OR" will locate each term or phrase and return every record that contains any or all of the terms included in the search. This is most useful for capturing similar terms or terms that have changed over time. For example, the terms for what we now refer to as universal design or accessibility have changed greatly over time, and if you wanted to try to access those older records, you might want to try to combine those terms using or.

Keyword Search Example:

NOT

"NOT" allows you to exclude from your search any record which has the term or phrase following "NOT". NOT can be helpful in limiting your search to a topic which may contain common words used in different contexts. For example, the words "architecture" or "design" can be very general and may be used in many different contexts. It is important to be aware, however, that you also risk excluding relevant items.

Keyword Search Example:

W(ithin)

The W(ithin) operator is used to indicate that one term will follow another within a given number of words. Word order is important when using this operator, unlike the N(ear) operator. It requires the second term to appear after the first term, and you should only use it if you a sure that the second word should follow the first.

Keyword Search Example:

Search 1: adventures of huckleberry finn

Search 2: adventures W2 finn

The first search would take longer because it is searching for four terms in the title rather than just for "adventures" and "finn" as in the second search.

Nesting Search Terms

Nesting allows you to set priorities for how the searching operations are done. When nesting is used, operations will be performed in the following order:

individual terms within parentheses

proximity operators N(ear) or W(ithin)

terms nested within parentheses

AND

NOT

OR

Working from left to right, the program first searches the catalog for the individual terms, stopping to combine any terms separated by a proximity operator (N or W). The program then combines any of the terms entered within parentheses. Finally, the program performs Boolean operations, starting with all terms or phrases separated by the operators AND, NOT, and finally OR.

Compare the two forms of searching; the first without nesting and the second with nesting.

Search 1:architecture NOT computer OR microprocessor

1. Find all records with "architecture" in them.
2. Go through that subset and weed out those records with "computer."
3. Add all records with "microprocessor" in them to the first weeded subset.

Search 2: architecture NOT (computer OR microprocessor)

1. Find all records with "architecture" in them.
2. Weed out all those records with "architecture" which have EITHER the term "computer" or "microprocessor" in them.

Field Searching

You may search within specific fields in a record (for example, author or title) by preceding your search word with a two-letter qualifier from the list below. This kind of search is very useful for books with very common or generic titles ("History of Art," "History of Graphic Design").

Keyword Search Examples:

Truncation

You may broaden your search by using the $ sign to truncate your search term. This can be used to collect versions of a word: child, children, childhood. Or, you can use ? to represent a single character within a word.
Keyword Search Examples:

Librarian Contact Information

• Karen DeWitt, Director, Design Library
• 513-3860
• karen_dewitt@ncsu.edu
• http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/kedewitt/