SWK 7450 Teaching Clinical Social Work

Boolean Operators

Use the Boolean Operators AND, OR and NOT to create search statements to enter in databases, Spartan Search, Google, etc.

Examples:

• College AND Technology AND Learning
• (College OR Higher Education OR University) AND (Technology OR Computers) AND (Learning OR Instruction)
• (Technology AND Learning AND Elementary ) NOT College

Wildcards

Wildcards allows you to search for multiple terms with the same root at once by using an asterisk. 

Examples:

• Educat* = Educate, Education, Educational, Educator
• Child* = Child, Children, Childish

Phrase Searching

Search for exact phrases using quotation marks.

Example:

• "higher education": returns results that contain the exact phrase "higher education"

Citation Chasing and "Cited By" Searching

Once you find a good article:

• Look at its References and find other articles that have cited it
• In Spartan Search, click the red arrows next to the article's title to find the article's References (the downward-facing arrow), and articles that have cited this title (the upward-facing arrow)