Systems Thinking and Systems Research

AND finds records with all of your terms/keywords and narrows your search.

OR finds records with any of the terms and broadens your search.

Truncation finds records with a term's various endings. For example, animat* = animate, animated, animation, etc. 

Quotation marks search for a phrase instead of individual words. For example, "social media".

Zero Results

• first check your spelling :). And don't forget that British (labour) and American (labor) spelling might effect your search results
• try using a term that might be more inclusive. For example, if your search yields no results for "twitter posts", then try twitter, or even try "social media"

Too Few Results

• use truncation and OR (ie. baby OR babies OR infant* OR toddler*), to expand the results
• search for articles listed in the bibliographies at the end of relevant articles that you do find
• perform an Author field search for the names of relevant authors who are listed in these bibliographies
• click on Find Similar Results (EBSCO databases) or Find more documents like this (ProQuest) from the full record page of a relevant article
• try References (ProQuest) on the search results page for more references

Non-relevant Results

• use proper subject headings. For example, instead of streaming, try "streaming media" or "streaming services"
• find a relevant article in your list of results, and use its proper subject headings to redo your search
• use the Subject limiter to focus on particular subjects of study

Too Many Results

• if your search yields too many results (ie. streaming), use AND to make it more specific (ie. streaming AND media AND covid-19)
• search for your terms in the Title field (from the pull-down menu on the search box or in advanced search on Page1+)
• use database-specific proper Subject headings
• use more limiters (ie. date range, publication type, special interest groupings, document type, journal title etc).