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International Studies: Finding Articles

A brief guide to selected library resources for International Studies

Database Search Tips

AND requires all specified words to appear in each document

          e.g. globalization AND poverty
                  welfare AND inequality

 

OR    requires any of the specified words to appear in each document

         e.g. international trade OR global econom*
                 Indian* OR aboriginal* OR native* OR indigenous OR First Nation*

 

NOT  excludes terms not desired

          e.g. Latin Americ* NOT Mexic*

Combining ideas

       e.g. women AND (third world OR developing countries)
              (free trade) AND (labo* union* OR trade union*) AND (Latin America* OR South America*)
       

 

  •         prioritize your concepts to begin your search with the most important one
  •         consider additional concepts to use, if necessary, to reduce or expand retrieval
  •         if the database has a thesaurus, either online or print, check for suggested terms

 

Not enough material?

  •           if you have combined several concepts using AND, start again and search only the most important one. Then add the next most important   one, and so forth
  •           look at each concept and see if you can think of additional synonyms (use OR)
  •           if you are searching free-text, look at your terms carefully and think of ways to broaden your phrasing

 

Too much material?

  •         look at a sample of the items retrieved; if a high proportion is not relevant, add another concept
  •         sometimes irrelevant records may be eliminated by NOTing out a particular aspect or population
  •         try limiting by language, date, form of material, particular field instead of free-text

Database Suggestions

News and Current Events

Search Strategy Sheet