BOOLEAN OPERATORS : Commands that allow searchers to combine terms and concepts. "And" narrows the search, locating records that have all concepts. "Or" broadens the results, finding all records containing any of the concepts. "Not" excludes records from the search.

DATABASE: Information organized and stored for retrieval by topic, subject, or field. Databases may be developed by either commercial publishers or by associations, and made accessible via a vendor. Read the scope note or use the help screens to determine who is responsible for the content of individual databases.

DESCRIPTOR: see subject headings

EVALUATION CRITERIA: In order to determine the value of a research tool (print or electronic) or a publication (book, video, government document, or article) to your research topic, look at the 1) date, 2) scope, 3) objectivity, 4) authority, and 5) accuracy.

FALSE DROPS: Records which contain all the keywords searched, but have nothing to do with the research topic. For example, if the keywords searched are art history, but the records retrieved refer the art of war in history, the latter a false drop - the words searched are there but the topic is incorrect.

FIELD SEARCHING: Allows searchers to focus the search strategy on a particular part, or "field," of the record. Examples of fields: author, title, journal, date, descriptor. In Nexis, this is called "segment searching."

FREE-TEXT SEARCHING : See also Keyword. This is a broad, less focused, method of searching and usually retrieves the most records.

FULL-CONTENT: The article as it was originally published, or a facsimile or scanned image of the article.

FULL-TEXT: The words from the article, but not the tables, pictures, or graphs.

GREY LITERATURE: Technical reports, internal documents, theses and other literature which have not been formally published. The web allows research institutions and other organizations to make available, to a wide audience, materials which would normally be difficult to locate.

KEYWORD: In the electronic research environment, keywords are words which may appear in any part of the record, sometimes even in the full-text of the document. Keywords can be from the article title, summary, periodical title and abstract. Read the Help screens for the database being searched to determine which fields are being searched.

LIMITING: Retrieves records which meet certain criteria: date, language, type of publication.

NESTING: Use parenthesis to dictate order of operation, or to link terms or concepts that might otherwise be separated. (ecotourism or tourism or hiking) and (environment or environmental) and (effect or impact)

PERIODICAL INDEX: A research tool which allows you to search for articles by subject. Indexes are published commercially or by associations and therefore do not indicate if a particular library owns a periodical title.

PHRASE: Two or more words strung together to find a topic, such as market share or romantic poetry. In the electronic research environment, some vendors allow phrase searching as the default (Infotrac Search Bank), some allow phrase searching only if proximity search strategies are used (FirstSearch), and some do not allow phrase searching at all (Peak, The Library Catalog).

POPULAR PUBLICATIONS: These publications are often written for anyone to understand and are often profusely illustrated for marketing appeal. Authors are often generalists rather than specialists. In popular magazines, some articles are unsigned. These publications usually do not have bibliographies or references.

PROXIMITY SEARCHING: Use adjacency connectors to indicate word order and/or proximity of terms to one another in the record or text.

SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS: In-depth publications written by experts in the field. Publications are generally peer reviewed and include bibliographies and references. Articles are always signed and often include place of employment. Audiences is the scholarly reader, such as professors, researchers, and students. The publications use jargon for the discipline rather than general vocabulary the general public would understand. Illustrations support the text, such as maps, tables, or photographs.

SCOPE: The description of the contents of a research tool. To determine the scope, read the introduction to or use the help screens for the resource. Scope includes disciplines covered, years covered, languages, and types of publications. For example, Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature is updated monthly and began in 1890. Articles, arranged by subject, are from popular, mainly American, magazines. Only English language periodicals are included.

STOP WORDS: Small, common words, such as the, a, an, of, at, by, etc. which are generally not searchable electronically except under specific conditions. If you are searching a database free-text, do not use these types of words in your strategy. Also called "noise words."

SUBJECT HEADINGS: Controlled vocabulary, established by the publisher of the catalog or index in use, to describe the contents of the material included in the resource. Also called descriptors, subjects.

TELNET: Use telnet to connect your computer to a remote computer via the Internet. This protocol is useful for searching library catalogs. After you login to the central computers, type "telnet" followed by the telnet address. To search the Library of Congress, type at the % or $ prompt. Other useful telnet addresses: University of Colorado, Boulder: libraries.colorado.edu

TRUNCATION: Adding a symbol to the root of a word allows retrieval of all variant endings. In Nexis, for instance, child! retrieves child, childs, children, childrens, childhood, etc. Peak, the Library Catalog:

Peak, the Library Catalog: *
Nexis: !
SilverPlatter: * or ?
(see online help screens for more information about the use of each truncation symbol)
FirstSearch (for plurals and possessives only): +
Dialog@CARL: ?