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SWK 7450 Teaching Clinical Social Work

Advanced Searching

Boolean Operators

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

Peanut Butter AND Jelly: only results with both peanut butter and jelly; Peanut Butter OR Jelly: results with peanut butter, with jelly, and with both; Peanut Butter NOT Jelly, results with Peanut Butter only

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

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)

screenshot of article record in Spartan Search

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